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LIGE GOLDEN 

The TMan 'Who Twinkjed 
William W. Harvey 



















































































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LIGE GOLDEN 

‘The cJ M'an Who ’Twinkled 

By 

WILLIAM W. HARVEY 

Illustrated by 

THOMAS HUNT 



BOSTON 

B. J. Brimmer Company 

1924 




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Copyright, 1924 

By B. J. BRIMMER COMPANY 
First Impression, February, 1924 


JUL 12 '24 


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Dedicated to all those good people 
who were once pronounced bad , and to 
those bad people who will some day un¬ 
cover the Good . 
















































































I . 
















'* 















ILLUSTRATIONS 


“He loves to talk with folks like Maggie Gil- 

lis” . Frontispiece 


“Limp like, upon the rock with their legs 

actually dangling over the falls” . . 29 

“Smiling as if he hadn’t a care in the world” 47 

“He was smiling so we knew he wasn’t dead” 66 

“You always get what you wish for. What’ll 

you have?”.123 

“We stopped a moment catching our breath 

as we glanced in at the window” , .146 







































•« 




* 













From the Lynnville (Vt.) Times, Sept. 15, 1Q21. 
News Item — Peoria , Sept. 2. 

By the astounding confession of the 
late Judge Benjamin Atwood of this 
city , just before his death , the name of 
one Elijah Golden is cleared of com¬ 
plicity in the crime for which he died in 
a western penitentiary many years ago. 
Nothing of the said Golden's anteced¬ 
ents appears to be known. He was a 
curious and somewhat mysterious char¬ 
acter , and died without funds or known 
relations. 

The above notice came under the eye of the 
editor by the merest accident , and is reproduced 
herewith in the hope that some of our older read¬ 
ers will be able to associate the name of this Eli¬ 
jah Golden with incidents which occurred in the 
little village of East Bur don, five miles north of 
here , something over forty years ago. 

We recall that the late editor of the Times, the 
Hon. Nathan Wilson , who was a native of that 


town, not infrequently referred to the life and 
teachings of a certain “Lige” Golden, and this 
man, who was a blacksmith by trade, appears to 
have left a marked impress upon his boyhood im¬ 
agination. 

If further information about this individual 
and the incidents surrounding his career can be 
obtained from first-hand sources, in the light of 
the above news item, we opine that it will prove 
of unusual interest to our readers. Ed. 

Lynnville Times — Sept. 29. 

In response to our request in last fortnight’s 
issue for information relative to Elijah Golden, 
we have been agreeably surprised by the receipt 
from an unexpected source of what promises to 
be a most entertaining and instructive document. 
This is in the form of a somewhat voluminous set 
of diary notes made by one of the boys who lived 
in the village of East Bur don in the old days and 
was in fact the boyhood chum of the late editor 
of this paper, Mr. Wilson. 

These notes, some of which are mutilated and 
others faded with age, are receiving the discrimi¬ 
nating attention of our editorial staff, and it is the 
intention to reproduce them in our columns in as 


nearly their original form and chronological order 
as is consistent with clearness. 

The writer of these notes will no doubt be iden¬ 
tified by some of his old friends, but as he has 
been a little shy about the use of his name in pub¬ 
lic print, we shall abide by his wishes. Suffice to 
say that he is an eminently respected and success¬ 
ful professional man in one of the big cities of 
the middle west. 

He writes that in order to educate their (( pre- 
cocious only son” his family moved from the 
country shortly after the events described, and 
later migrated to westward. For this reason he 
has never revisited the haunts of his boyhood, but 
the mental pictures which he carries of the little 
hamlet nestled among the hills are very vivid, and 
bring back many scenes and incidents which have 
profoundly influenced his life. 

He expresses the hope that after the publication 
of such portions of his notes as we deem (( wise 
and proper” it will be safe for him to visit the 
town; and wishes to know if there is still good 
fishing in the old Dishmill Brook. 

We have assured him that some things never 
grow old, and our cordial invitation is to come 
back and try his hand. The Dishmill is one of 


the brooks that has never yet disappointed its old 
admirers. 

Next week we shall therefore issue the first in¬ 
stallment of 

LIGE GOLDEN 
The Man Who Twinkled . 


The incidents herein are recorded as 
taking place during the springy summer 
and jail of the year 1879. As the original 
notes have required a certain amount 
of transposition and rearrangement in 
the interests of continuity , it has been 
thought wise to omit specific dates. 






















\ 


I 

Saturday. 

Today has been a pretty exciting day in our 
village and Lige Golden is the hero, although I 
guess he made Doctor Rush feel pretty cheap, by 
bringing Charlie Whiting back to life long after 
the doctor said it was no use and had gone and 
told Josh Bean, the undertaker, about his drown¬ 
ing in the mill pond and to come and get him. 

It was funny too, you can bet, to see the look 
on Josh’s red face when he came, puffing and 
blowing, round the corner of his coffin and casket 
shop, and heard the boys all laughing and hur¬ 
rahing, and shouting “He’s all right,” and some¬ 
body yelled “You’re too late Josh,” and his face 
fell like he really felt disappointed over what ever 
it was we were laughing at. 

We couldn’t help thinking what we heard Josh 
say, one day last week, when Lige Golden asked 
him, down in front of the post office before every¬ 
body: “How’s business this spring?” and Josh 
answered right out, “Damn rotten, Lige, sense 
you come to town.” Everybody laughed because 


17 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


we all knew there hadn’t been a death in town for 
a long time and that Lige had cured up the only 
prospect when he got old Carrie Finney on her 
feet and going about better than she had been for 
years. That’s another story, as the writers say, 
but it just made the look on Josh’s face seem all 
the funnier. 

Lige’s real name is Elijah Golden and he is the 
new man at the blacksmith shop. Bill Straiter 
hired him this spring when the work started up, 
and he does say he’s the best horse shoer he ever 
had, though he just took him on trial, not know¬ 
ing anything about him, or his family, or where 
he came from, or anything. 

Lige has been working there over a month and 
nobody knows anything about him yet and they 
can’t seem to get anything out of him, because 
every time they question him about himself he 
turns it off, some way or other, and begins to talk 
about other things. Some of the things he says 
sound kind of strange and most of the folks think 
he’s a little queer in the head, but the boys mostly 
like him, because he’s always so good natured, 
and when he does talk he’s so interesting and so 

18 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


different from anyone else in the village. I guess 
he must have traveled all over the world for he is 
always remarking, “That’s the way they do things 
in Peru” or “That’s what they say in India” or 
some other place. 

Well, to go back to what happened. Charlie 
Whiting and his mother, who is the widow of El¬ 
mer Whiting, who was the son of old Squire Whit¬ 
ing of this town, has been visiting here the past 
month, from Worcester, and we have had great 
times making him do all the stunts we boys in the 
village are used to, but which he, being a city lad, 
is green to. 

Charlie is a pretty good little chap and plucky 
but while he doesn’t put on airs like some city 
boys, he is so white and genteel looking and his 
mother keeps him so spick and span all the time 
that we boys in the village are sure to get him 
into some scrape most every day, so that he will 
go home looking — well, more like the rest of us. 

The first day he was here there was snow on 
the ground and we took him round to all the ma¬ 
ple sugar camps, where we knew the farmers were 
sugaring off, and he ate so much sugar in all the 


19 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


places, he got sick and we had to drag him on our 
sled. 

My, wasn’t he sick! Of course all the farmers, 
when they found he was Elmer Whiting’s son, 
told him to pitch in and eat all the sugar he 
wanted, and of course Nate Wilson and I helped 
ourselves, too. But we were used to it, but 
Charlie wasn’t and we kept stumping him to eat 
more. We would pour out a lot of the hot syrup 
on the snow and when it got hard and waxy we 
would roll up a great big gob and stump him to 
put it all into his mouth at once, and then we 
would stand round and laugh to see his teeth 
stick together. 

Well, the first time he began to get a little sick, 
he laid down on some boards and pretended he 
wanted to take a little nap. I guess he really 
went to sleep, for we came back and found him 
that way, and we thought we would try a little 
trick that we had heard about among the men 
who sit up all night to boil sap. 

We got some charcoal and rubbed it on the 
back of his hands, then we put a little syrup on his 
eyelids, and then sat back and tickled his nose 


20 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


with a straw. Of course when he began to wake 
up and found his eyes feeling sticky, he rubbed 
them with his knuckles and by the time he was 
awake he was a sight to behold. 

Well, all the week we had been doing things 
like that; and today we were running on the logs 
in the mill pond, and digging spruce gum. 

This time of the year the pond is full of logs 
which have come down the river from the logging 
camps, and the gum softens in the sun so that we 
can scrape it out with our jackknives, and we 
make up large balls as big as your fist and take 
them to school. 

When the teacher catches us chewing gum, she 
takes us by the ear and leads us up before the 
whole school, and makes us put it into the stove. 
And when she asks us if we have got any more 
gum, and makes us turn our pockets inside out, 
and perhaps searches our desk, the whole school 
is giggling because every scholar knows that a 
big ball of gum is being passed from one to an¬ 
other, and will be handed back to us as soon as 
we are ready for another chew. 

Of course running on logs is a little bit danger- 


21 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


ous, even for us boys who are used to it, for you 
can never tell just which logs may roll, and you 
have to jump pretty lively sometimes to escape 
duckings. Besides there are some pretty deep 
holes in the pond, and when the water is high 
there is quite a current. 

We boys who are used to it don’t think much 
about the danger for we know all the dangerous 
places, and I suppose it was pretty careless, on 
our part, to lead Charlie on as we did. 

Well, Nate and I had been leading Charlie 
quite a race over the logs, sometimes leaving him 
quite a ways behind, and looking back and laugh¬ 
ing to see him trying to balance himself on a roll¬ 
ing log or trying to get up courage to make the 
next jump, which might land him among a bunch 
of small logs where he would have to keep jump¬ 
ing lively from one to another to keep from sink¬ 
ing. 

The last we saw of him he was balancing him¬ 
self on some logs up by the deep hole near where 
the Dishmill brook comes in. We were a few 
rods down toward the mill where we were at work 
on a rich find of spruce gum. He was stooping 


22 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


over looking between the logs and we think he 
must have been looking for the big trout that we 
had seen there the day before and tried to tempt 
with our bait. 

We found the log with the gum and shouted 
for him to come on down and help us. We didn’t 
get any answer, and finally, when we looked up, 
we couldn’t see Charlie anywhere. At first we 
thought he must have gone ashore in the bushes. 
So we kept on shouting and next thing we knew, 
Charlie’s cap bobbed up between some logs right 
near where we were standing. Well, you’d bet¬ 
ter bet we were scared. We knew mighty quick 
that Charlie had fallen in and was drifting down 
underneath the logs toward the dam. 

The water is pretty swift right along there be¬ 
cause the brook, at this season of the year, is 
swollen by the melting snow on the mountain to 
quite a torrent, and the current is felt quite a 
ways after it enters the pond. 

Charlie couldn’t swim much and it was aw¬ 
fully foolish of us to make him take such chances, 
and it all came over us in a minute, that we were 


23 


LIGE GOLDEN—THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


not much better than murderers unless we could 
do something quick to save him. 

He might at this moment be floating under our 
feet, and we first off started looking down into 
the deep water between the logs. We could see 
the sand on the bottom and bits of twigs and 
leaves and sawdust floating along in the current, 
but no Charlie. 

What we should have done, if we had seen 
him, I don’t know, for it is awfully dangerous to 
get caught down under the logs, and the current 
sweeping you rapidly along toward the dam; but 
I guess either of us would have risked our lives, 
we felt so mean, and so sorry thinking of his 
mother and his old grandparents, and what all 
the villagers would say about us. 

They say that a drowning person thinks of all 
that ever happened to him in an instant, and that 
all the sins he ever committed and everything 
come into his mind before he passes into eternity; 
but I guess the next thing to that is what goes 
through one’s mind when he has been the cause 
of someone else drowning. 


24 


LIGE GOLDEN—THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


Then when we didn’t see him between the logs 
or anywhere, I guess we did yell. 

Bill Sykes down at the mill heard us and came 
running up on the logs with his spike-pole in his 
hands, and someone on the opposite bank shouted 
for a rope, but my! how the time sped and no 
signs of anything to give us any hope. We saw 
Bill a little ways off, stop and gaze toward the 
dam. We knew what that meant. The water 
was very high and in another minute we expected 
to see Charlie’s body rise up and go over the dam 
and be dashed to pieces bn the rocks below. 

There was a boom made of logs fastened to¬ 
gether end to end which ran from the other bank, 
kind of slanting, across the mill pond up to the 
sluice-way at the mill, and this kept the logs back 
from going over the dam. There was quite an 
open space of water between this boom and the 
dam and into this we were all gazing, realizing 
that there was little we could do, even if we 
should see the body, as anyone who jumped in 
here, even if he was an expert swimmer, would be 
most sure of being washed over the dam. 

The blacksmith shop is just opposite the place 


25 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


where the boom starts from the shore, and sud¬ 
denly we saw Lige Golden running rapidly down 
to this point. By the time he reached it he had 
thrown away both of his shoes and his vest, and 
then he began running like a cat along the boom 
looking first one way and then another. 

Pretty soon he stopped and looked back where 
the brook comes in, as if to find just the right 
place along the boom where the current of the 
brook would be taking the body. He looked 
down toward the dam, then up toward the brook, 
and began working up on the logs in that direc¬ 
tion, peering down between them as he went. 

Suddenly we saw him go down on his stomach 
across a log and the next instant the log rolled 
over, and him with it, head first into the water 
and out of sight. That was all we saw, not even 
a splash or any sign to show whether Elijah had 
fallen in by accident, or gone down after some¬ 
thing he had seen. 

I don’t know how long we stood there, but it 
seemed an age. Somehow we felt “It’s all over.” 
Two or three other people had come up on the 
bank — and some teams on the road had stopped. 


26 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


Everyone was looking where Elijah went in, and 
nobody knew what to do next. 

Suddenly someone on the bank gave a shout 
and the next instant we heard a splash and a 
spluttering and there was Lige not more than two 
yards from the boom in the clear water, and he 
had Charlie in tow. Charlie lay all limp and 
white with his face up and Lige had him by the 
hair, and was swimming hard, with one hand, 
towards the logs. The current was against him 
and you could see at once that he couldn’t make 
it and keep his hold on Charlie. He was drifting 
farther toward the dam every second. 

We ran to the edge, but it was no use. Bill 
Sykes soon came up with his pole but by that 
time it would not reach. One of the men started 
to run back to his team for a rope, but it was plain 
that Lige and Charlie were now sweeping toward 
the dam so fast that nothing could save them. 

Suddenly Lige stopped swimming and turned 
his head toward the dam. You could see that he 
realized his danger, and we thought he was giving 
up. We felt like closing our eyes but I guess 
some of us felt like praying too — but we couldn’t 


27 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


use much faith because we couldn’t see any way 
out, even for the Lord to save him, unless he 
threw down a rope from heaven, and that wasn’t 
likely according to what we knew about drowning 
accidents. 

Well, when we looked again, Lige had begun to 
swim sideways — that is, across the current to¬ 
ward the other bank. 

At first this seemed like he had lost his senses, 
for the bank was quite a long distance and he 
wasn’t much more than ten feet from the edge of 
the dam. The water was so high it was sweeping 
along with tremendous force, and the roar, as it 
fell over on the rocks below, made us want to stop 
our ears. 

But Lige was right. He knew just what he was 
doing and he took the one chance. Out there in 
the middle of the dam was a rock that could be 
seen in low water but now was just below the sur¬ 
face. It was sort of flat on top and didn’t make 
much show in the high water, but if Lige could 
only reach it he might hold on till help came. 
Well, that was what he did. 

For a minute I thought one or the other would 


28 





































































































































LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


be swept over but he managed to hook his free 
arm under the edge toward us while his body and 
that of Charlie were washed, limp like, up onto 
the rock with their legs actually dangling over the 
falls. 

Gee! How he hung on to that boy! Lucky he 
had a good head of hair but I thought his scalp 
would be torn off. Lige finally got his legs about 
Charlie’s body and got a better grip on his collar 
and then we knew they were safe, for the moment. 

The rope came, and Lige first fastened it about 
Charlie’s body, tying knots with one hand and his 
teeth, and when he thought it was secure, he gave, 
signal and we drew the body up on the logs. It 
was an awful sight to see, he was so limp and 
white — and kept turning over and over in the 
water as he was pulled along. 

Lige was making frantic signs for us to hurry 
and we thought he was losing his grip, but when 
the rope reached him he didn’t stop to tie it, but 
gave it a twist about one arm, plunged in and be¬ 
gan to swim. 

My! he almost made the rope slack in our 
hands as we hauled it in, he was such a powerful 


29 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


swimmer. He bounced himself up on the logs 
and began running toward the shore where they 
had taken Charlie’s body. 

Someone ran ahead for the doctor, but Lige 
overtook those who had Charlie, and made them 
lay him down on the ground. He gave orders 
and everybody obeyed. He sent someone for 
brandy and told Nate and me to go over to the 
shop and take a horse blanket off Abe Gilson’s 
horse and wrap it up tight to keep the heat in it. 

We ran as fast as we could and when we came 
back, quite a crowd had collected and was stand¬ 
ing about, but Lige made them all stand off a 
proper distance to give plenty of air, while two or 
three, that he had asked, were helping. They had 
Charlie on his back and some of his clothes were 
off and they were rubbing his legs and body while 
Lige was raising Charlie’s arms up above his head 
and then slowly bringing them down to his sides 
and pressing on his chest. Every now and then 
Lige would turn the body over and lift it up by 
the hips so that the head would hang down, and 
the water would drip from the nose and mouth. 

We spread out the blanket and Charlie was 


30 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


wrapped up more or less, but the work went on 
just the same. Charlie didn’t show any signs of 
life at all, and I guess most of us were thinking 
about the same, that it wasn’t any use. 

Then the doctor came up and tried to find 
Charlie’s pulse and told Lige the case was hope¬ 
less. Lige didn’t say a word but kept right on 
working and you could see that the doctor didn’t 
know just where to fit in and was a little peeved 
that more respect wasn’t paid to his judgment. 
He tried for a time to do something, but you 
could see he didn’t think it was any use, and 
finally he stood back and after making some pret¬ 
ty discouraging remarks, turned and walked 
away, saying he would send Josh down after the 
body. 

Well sir! Lige just got down on his knees over 
Charlie’s body and we thought he was going to 
pray. Then he leaned way over and put his face 
down to Charlie’s face and we thought he was 
going to cry — but pretty soon we could see that 
he was actually breathing his own breath down 
into Charlie’s lungs. 

We could see Charlie’s chest rise and fall as 


3i 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


the breath would go down into him and then be 
pushed back by Elijah’s hand on Charlie’s stom¬ 
ach. And when the breath came out we would 
hear little gurgles and sounds like Charlie’s voice 
that made us feel pretty queer, I can tell you. 

Every once in a while after Lige had pressed 
the air out, he would straighten up a little and 
watch, as if he expected something to happen, and 
finally I guess it did, for we heard Lige say, 
“Thank God!” 

Charlie actually had made a little gasp all by 
himself. This was the first sign we had seen of 
any life, and it wasn’t very much, I can tell you, 
but Lige knew what it meant. 

Well, he went to work again with his arms, and 
every now and then put his mouth down and blew 
into his lungs, but not so often, for pretty soon 
Charlie gave a little sigh and began to breathe 
quite regular. It was then for the first time Lige 
tried a little of the brandy on him, but not much, 
for he couldn’t swallow very well, and Lige said it 
wasn’t much use anyhow. 

The sun came out quite hot and Lige said that 
was better than brandy. He let Charlie lie in the 


3 2 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


sun, and kept rubbing him gently, first one place 
and then the other. Finally, after Charlie had 
opened his eyes and tried to speak, Lige rolled 
him up in the horse blanket and picking him up 
tenderly, like a mother does her baby, he started 
to carry him up towards Squire Whiting’s house 
in the village. 

That was when the boys and men let out a 
shout, and just then Josh Bean, the undertaker, 
came around the corner. 


33 


II 


Sunday. 

Today after church, Nate and I cut Sunday 
School and sneaked down to our little island, be¬ 
cause we had so many things we wanted to talk 
over, all by ourselves. 

The rescue of Charlie Whiting by Elijah Gold¬ 
en has been the talk of the whole town and today 
the minister preached about it and had most ev¬ 
erybody crying, and I guess we felt we couldn’t 
stand very much more. 

We thought it would be a day of great rejoic¬ 
ing, but instead of that, after the sermon, every¬ 
body looked pretty solemn and we knew from past 
experience just what that would lead to in the 
Sunday School. 

The minister said that such an episode should 
lead to a grate revival of religion in our town and 
knowing our part in getting Charlie into trouble, 
we felt sure they would begin on us the first 
chance they had. So we lit out. 

The Dishmill brook flows down back of the 
church, and there is a little island where we boys 


34 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


have camp fires and all sorts of good times. There 
is a plank across the stream on the side next the 
church, and we can go over, and pull the plank 
after us and then nobody is likely to disturb us 
unless they come down the brook from above. At 
this season, when the water is high, the roar of 
the brook makes so much noise we wouldn’t be 
likely to hear anyone calling us. 

This brook gets its name from an old mill at 
the head of the village where they used to turn 
out wooden dishes. There is not much left of the 
mill but the falls are still there, and the island 
is made by the water which was divided at the 
mill, part going over the falls and part going 
through a flume under the mill to turn the wheel, 
and coming out on the other side. Of course it 
is not really an island because anyone who would 
climb down over the rocks at the mill, would 
come out on the island. There are good trout in 
the pools below the falls, and we boys often fish 
down from there, on each side of the island, and 
the plank is placed near the foot of the island so 
we can get ashore. 

The island is all grown up to alders and birches 


35 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


and small spruce and is pretty thick around the 
edges, but up in the center toward the falls there 
is a place which is all gravel and rocks and sur¬ 
rounded by thick foliage, and it makes the best 
place ever for camp fires and pow wows. 

Well, to go back to yesterday. While Lige was 
bringing Charlie to life, I guess the news had 
spread that he was dead, for Mr. Hardiman, the 
minister, was talking to Charlie’s mother on the 
porch when we came in sight. 

Squire Whiting’s home is up quite a steep hill, 
just out of the village, so I guess nobody had gone 
ahead to tell his mother the glad news that 
Charlie was saved, and most of the crowd had 
dropped back when we reached the hill, so there 
was just Nate and Elijah and I, as we came in 
sight. 

Charlie was all wrapped up in the horse blan¬ 
ket, and it was wonderful to see how easily Lige 
carried him along up that steep hill, after his ex¬ 
ertions. 

Lige didn’t seem the least bit tired and he was 


36 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


talking and laughing, as if nothing had happened. 
I guess he was telling us about his experience in 
the South Sea Islands where he learned to swim 
under water, diving for pearls and corals and 
things. 

It seems that he found Charlie caught by a 
snag and held down under the logs; and that was 
the only reason he had not been swept along over 
the dam before Elijah came. Lige saw him there 
and went down and untangled him, but as soon 
as he was loose, the current swept them below 
the boom before Elijah could get a good hold on 
a log. He said he grabbed at the boom log but 
the bark came off and he couldn’t get a fresh grip. 

We were so busy listening to Lige and so happy 
thinking of the good news we were bringing that 
I guess we didn’t grasp the situation up at the 
house, and if we saw the tears in Mrs. Whiting’s 
eyes we must have thought they were tears of joy. 

The minister looked pretty solemn but we 
didn’t think anything of that, being used to it, 
and Charlie’s mother covered her face with her 
handkerchief as we passed between them through 
the open door. 


37 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


Lige never said a word but was smiling all the 
time, as he walked straight through the parlor 
and into the parlor bedroom and laid Charlie on 
the bed. Mrs. Whiting followed and stood hesi¬ 
tating and wringing her hands in the doorway. 

Charlie didn’t open his eyes right away but 
lay so quiet and looked so pale that I guess Lige 
was a little worried for a minute, for he felt his 
pulse, and put his hand over Charlie’s heart, then 
he turned and said, oh, so gently, but joyous, 
“Madame, thy son liveth.” 

At this Charlie’s mother burst into sobs and 
started to throw herself on the bed, but Lige held 
her back gently with his strong arms. She didn’t 
seem to hear anything we said for a minute or 
two while we tried to tell her the truth. 

She kept weeping and crying out: “Oh, it’s 
cruel! it’s cruel! It’s no use to tell me he’s in 
heaven with his father. He was all I had. Why 
couldn’t God have left him to me a little longer? 
I can’t believe it is God’s will. No, Mr. Hardi- 
man, I can’t, I can’t. I know I’m rebellious, but 
I don’t deserve it. What have I done? What 
have I done?” 


38 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


Of course it all came to us what the minister 
had been saying to her, thinking Charlie was 
dead, and we felt stupid that we hadn’t noticed 
the way it was, when we came up, and said some¬ 
thing more appropriate. 

But just then we didn’t know what to say, for 
Charlie began to move a little and we were afraid 
the shock would kill her. 

Lige saw it all pretty quick I guess, because he 
turned her face away, and up into his, and looked 
down with the most wonderful understanding 
look I ever saw on anybody’s face, and said slow¬ 
ly and gently, “My dear friend, can you be strong 
for a moment, and believe every word I tell you ? 
I shall not deceive you but tell you the truth, and 
you will be very happy.” 

Then he told her in a few simple words what 
he had done and how Charlie was saved. It was 
wonderful the effect Lige had on her, she became 
so calm all of a sudden, like as if he had cast a 
spell over her. 

They had been standing in the doorway sort of 
blocking it and the minister was back in the par¬ 
lor and couldn’t see the bed but I guess he didn’t 


39 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


know what to do or say, and his face got kind of 
red when Lige was talking. 

Then Lige led her over to the bedside and she 
kissed Charlie on the forehead and he opened his 
eyes and smiled, and about that time my eyes got 
kind of blurry for some reason, and I went out 
on the porch. Nate came, too, and as we passed 
the minister we heard him saying over as if to 
himself, “A miracle! a miracle! God works in a 
mysterious way his wonders to perform.” 

But we, who had seen everything from the be¬ 
ginning, were thinking only of Lige Golden, and 
how he had risked his life for a boy he had never 
seen or heard of before he came here from Wor¬ 
cester; and I guess he had never seen Charlie’s 
mother anyhow, because she didn’t go out much 
except among her own set, and Lige was only a 
hired man in the Blacksmith Shop. 

Afterwards, we came back down to the village, 
and Lige went over across the logs to pick up his 
hat and shoes, and then he went home I guess, 
and we hadn’t seen a sign of him since. 

After supper I staid in and wrote my diary, 


40 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


and this morning I overslept and had just time to 
get ready for church. 

So here we were, Nate and I, for the first time 
we had a chance to get together and we were won¬ 
dering what had become of Lige, and if he got 
cold or anything, from his wetting. 

We thought maybe we had better go up to 
Lige’s house and see if he was all right, but we 
sat for a while on some logs we had arranged last 
fall about a place where we had a bon-fire and a 
corn roast. 

It was the first time this spring we had been 
over to our island and it felt good, I can tell you. 
The sun came out warm on our backs, and the 
buds and green things were bursting forth every¬ 
where and we could hear the roar of the falls and 
the chirping of the birds and everything, and it 
seemed such a relief to get away from all the sol¬ 
emn folks and the stuffy church with its high- 
backed pews and the sound of the wheezy old or¬ 
gan, and the choir in the gallery, and the prayers 
and benediction and all that, so we just heaved 
a sigh of relief and sat for a while without saying 
much of anything. 


4i 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


Lige was living by himself in a little lonesome 
old house about a quarter of a mile above the 
mill known as the Aunt Sarah Woods place. 
Until Lige took it, we didn’t care to go very near 
that region because it was said to be haunted by 
the ghost of old Aunt Sarah who had lived there 
alone for many years and who was found dead in 
bed after she had been lying there for nobody 
knows how long and was found by Joe Peneau, 
a Frenchman who happened to go by and look in 
the window. When Lige came, he wanted to get 
a place where he could board himself and as he 
wasn’t afraid of ghosts he took the place, and has 
lived there ever since. 

As I said before, Lige has some queer notions, 
and some of them are about food. Most of the 
farmers live on salt pork and potatoes, and Lige, 
after trying the fare at Ezra Kimball’s for a week, 
decided he rather cook his own food, and when he 
took the haunted house we didn’t blame him 
much, that is, if he could get along with the 
ghost. But us boys couldn’t get over our feelings, 
in spite of the fact that Lige had been there quite 
a long time now and nothing had happened. I 


42 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


don’t think Lige had been troubled much with 
callers so far, and although we had been getting 
pretty well over our belief in the stories we had 
heard, we had not been in the house, and still 
felt a little creepy when we thought of it, not 
knowing just what we might see there. 

They say, too, that Lige has a lot of idols and 
queer things that he has brought from different 
parts of the world, and some books on magic and 
black art and spirit mediums and all that, and it 
has made quite a good deal of talk in the village 
since Jim Hunter called there one day for a drink 
of water and reported what he saw. 

But I must come back to where we were sitting 
there in the sun, on the logs around the old camp 
fire. 

We talked over the accident quite a spell, and 
how it all happened, and how mean we felt when 
we thought Charlie was lost; and then we got to 
talking about Lige and his wonderful strength 
and how he could stay down under the water and 
do things that nobody else in the village would 
ever think of doing. 

Then we got to thinking about what happened 


43 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 

up at the house, and the look on the minister’s 
face when Lige told Charlie’s mother he wouldn’t 
deceive her, but would tell her the real truth. 

“Wonder if that was why Mr. Hardiman gave 
Lige such a slight in his sermon?” Nate asked. 

I hadn’t thought of it before, but it came over 
me all at once, what the minister must have 
thought: that Lige was sort of giving him a little 
rap over Mrs. Whiting’s shoulder for telling her 
that Charlie was in heaven, and that it was all 
God’s will. 

Of course it wasn’t God’s will for Charlie to be 
drowned, or he wouldn’t have let Lige pull him 
out and bring him back to life, and if it really was 
God’s intention to take Charlie to heaven, what 
was Lige doing but trying to defeat the will of the 
Almighty ? 

Nate and I discussed this quite a while but we 
didn’t seem to get anywhere, then we began to 
discuss some of the things Mr. Hardiman said in 
his sermon. 

Mr. Hardiman seemed to think it was all a case 
of divine providence anyhow, but we thought he 


44 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 

ought to have given Lige a little more credit for 
the splendid work he done. 

He said that God sometimes used very humble 
means for the carrying out of his purposes, and in 
this case he had employed one who wasn’t even a 
professed Christian. 

But, he said, it was God who really saved the 
boy after all, because He, in his infinite wisdom, 
knowing all things from the beginning, had 
placed the rock in that mill pond just so that, 
when the time came, the struggling, drowning 
souls would find a place to cling. This rock 
should symbol to us the rock of ages to which we 
must cling if we wished to be saved from the abyss 
over which we were all dangling, like Lige and 
Charlie were dangling over the falls and the rocks 
below. 

He said that Jehovah had decreed that we must 
all die in our sins, but that Jesus was sent to be 
our rock of ages, and it was only by clinging to 
him that we could be saved from eternal suffering 
in the bottomless pit. He said this was the plan 
of salvation, and we could not reject it without 


45 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


losing our souls, which were much more impor¬ 
tant than our bodies. 

Of course we had heard most of this before, and 
we had never doubted it was true, till this morn¬ 
ing, but when we remembered how Lige had 
risked his life, and how he had hung on to Charlie, 
even when he knew that by letting go, he could 
have reached the boom, we thought Lige was 
more like Jesus, than the rock was; and we 
thought Mr. Hardiman was mighty mean that he 
didn’t say so, instead of referring to him as “one 
outside the fold.” 

Mr. Hardiman said it had all happened to 
teach us the great lesson of God’s love and the 
rock of ages, and to warn us of our danger before 
it was too late. 

Then the choir sang “Cling to the rock,” but 
we were thinking all the time that, that was just 
what Lige did; and we couldn’t see why he should 
be held up as one who was in danger of God’s 
wrath instead of a savior, as he really was. 

“Well, I’m going to cling to Lige, anyhow, in¬ 
stead of old Hardiman,” Nate blurted out, and 
before the words were out of his mouth, the 


46 
























































LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


bushes rustled behind us and when we looked 
back, startled like, there was the face of Lige 
Golden himself, smiling as if he hadn’t a care or 
worry in the world. 

“So you’re going to cling to me instead of Mr. 
Hardiman” he laughed. “Well, if it’s another 
case of getting into the pond you better make sure 
I’m handy by. It was just pure chance that I 
looked out of the shop window, when I did, and 
saw that boy fall in. Another time he might not 
be so lucky.” 

“Then you don’t believe it was divine provi¬ 
dence,” I said. 

“Which?” he asked. “His falling in or my 
pulling him out?” 

“I don’t know,” I answered. “I suppose may¬ 
be both,” but I had never thought of it that way 
before. Then I added, “Mr. Hardiman didn’t 
put it that way. He said it was the rock.” 

Lige laughed right out at this and asked, “Did 
he say anything about the snag?” 

“What snag?” 

“Why the snag that caught Charlie’s clothes, 
and held him under, till I came. Did he think 


47 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


that had been placed there by divine providence 
too?” 

This was a poser, because it didn’t seem so 
natural, somehow, to think of God putting snags 
in the river, as it did to think he put the rock 
there. One could talk about the rock of ages in a 
sermon, but I don’t believe it would have sounded 
half so well if Mr. Hardiman had said the same 
things about a snag , and yet we knew that if it 
hadn’t been for the snag, that held Charlie back, 
he would have floated right down past the rock 
and over the dam before anybody could save him. 
I suppose he could have been caught by the rock, 
but it didn’t look very likely, especially as it took 
all Lige’s strength to keep from going over the 
falls. 

Lige didn’t say anything more about divine 
providence, just then. He came out of the bush¬ 
es, and then we saw that he had an alder fish pole 
in his hand and a fish basket slung over his shoul¬ 
der. 

He came up and sat down on a log and opened 
the basket and showed us the most wonderful 
catch of speckled beauties we had seen for a long 

48 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


time. My! Whatever you say about Lige Gold¬ 
en, you’ve got to admit he is some fisherman! 

I guess we forgot for a moment it was Sunday, 
for he began to divide up the trout into three 
piles and we had visions of taking home enough 
for a feast for the whole family. 

“Lucky I met you boys” he said, “for I never 
could eat all these myself and I was wondering 
what to do with them.” 

He told us that he woke up early and felt kind 
of restless, after the excitement of yesterday, so 
he had gone on a long tramp up on the side of the 
mountain and then he happened to think he 
would fish the brook all the way back. He looked 
kind of funny when he said this — and his eyes 
twinkled a bit as if he expected us to say some¬ 
thing, but I didn’t think till afterwards what he 
had on his mind, but I guess now he expected 
we’d ask him how he “happened” to have his fish 
basket and bait and things. 

That is just like Lige, he always seems to en¬ 
joy a joke on himself better than on anybody else, 
and he will sometimes act real disappointed if 
folks aren’t bright enough to get the point. But 


49 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


instead, Nate suddenly looked up and exclaimed, 
“We can’t take ’em home, Lige, it’s Sunday.” 

“Why that’s so,” Lige said, “I never thought 
of that either. Of course you can’t take ’em home 
Sunday, — your father is deacon of the Baptist 
Church.” 

We looked kind of crestfallen, but Lige spoke 
up cheerful like and said, “I’ll tell you, boys, how 
we can do some real good with them, even if it is 
Sunday. Phil Shackford has been on a drunk all 
the week and I’ll bet his big family of hungry 
children will never raise any question of religion 
about eating those trout. And if his children 
can’t eat ’em, he’s got cats enough that will.” 

At this we all laughed and began to put the 
trout back in the basket. 

Speaking of food had reminded us it must be 
time for dinner and we thought we’d better get 
home before we were missed, anyhow. 

But we sat still a little longer and told Lige 
some of the things Mr. Hardiman had said in his 
sermon, and how he had sort of made as little as 
he could about Lige’s noble and heroic deed, — 
and his being out of the fold and all that. 


5o 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


We thought it would make Lige angry, and we 
wouldn’t have blamed him a bit, but Lige sat 
calm through it all and didn’t seem a bit put out. 

Instead, he acted kind of dreamy like and once 
he spoke up as if he was talking to himself: 

“Have I been so long a time with you and you 
have not known me, Philip?” 

Mr. Hardiman’s first name is Philip, so we 
thought of course Lige meant him, but we didn’t 
know they were old acquaintances, and then 
when we asked him, he started up suddenly and 
said, “Oh, I was thinking of someone else.” 

Lige roused himself, after a while, and we 
started down toward the end of the island but we 
got a chance to ask Lige one or two more ques¬ 
tions as we walked along. He said that maybe 
he didn’t know as much about divine providence 
as Mr. Hardiman, and perhaps it was too big a 
subject for us to settle all at once. Then he was 
thoughtful a minute before he said slowly: 

“If God is sai Infinite Being , how can we, with 
our little minds, expect to see Him all at one 
time and all in one place — in this world or in 
any other?” 


5i 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


He said he thought it was better to see some¬ 
thing of God every day, as we went along, and 
he expected there would be enough of God to last 
him all his life if he should live forever. 

It was the same way about God’s purposes. 
All he could make out was, that the laws of na¬ 
ture were harmonious, and that there couldn’t 
be two Gods, or two Purposes, or the worlds 
would fall apart. Then, if there was only one 
great purpose in the universe, life must be one 
great harmony. 

But the fellow in the band who played nothing 
but a drum could never get the full sense of the 
music unless he stopped beating it for a while 
and took a seat in the audience. 

When we asked him what he meant, he was 
quiet for a minute, gazing at the clouds, and then, 
turning his eyes to ours he asked, 

“Did you ever lie on your back on the top of 
the mountain on a beautiful star-lit night and 
listen to the music of the spheres?” 

That was what he meant by getting out of the 
band for a time and into the audience. 

But on the other hand it was very important 


52 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


that we learn to play our part well, and not be 
trying all the time to play like somebody whose 
instrument worked on a different plan from our 
own. 

Nate asked him about heaven, and he said he 
couldn’t see much use in thinking of heaven as 
some place where everybody would be happy with 
the same things, and it wasn’t a matter of possess¬ 
ing things at all. It was just learning to be hap¬ 
py anyhow, whether you had things or not. 

It was a lot more important, he thought, to 
learn to give up. And if there was any one thing 
we thought we couldn’t be happy without, until 
we got it somehow, it would be better not to try 
for that thing at all, but try something else in¬ 
stead. 

He said that if we once got the right idea, then, 
the things we wanted would come along as a mat¬ 
ter of course. But, staking all our happiness on 
getting some one thing was like putting all our 
eggs in one basket. The bottom might fall out. 

Then he stopped suddenly, for we had reached 
the plank, and while we were putting it across, he 


53 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


opened his fish basket and appeared to be search¬ 
ing among the trout. 

“By the way, boys,” he said, “did you lose any¬ 
thing yesterday?” 

We felt in our pockets and Nate shouted, “Yes, 
my pearl handled penknife I got for Christmas.” 

“See what I caught under the falls,” he said as 
he held up a beautiful half pounder by the gills. 
“He was trying to jump the falls and I guess he 
was so heavy he couldn’t get to the top. He was 
like a lot of folks who eat too much, I guess.” And 
as he said this, he turned the trout over and held 
him up by the tail, and what do you think? 
Nate’s penknife fell right out of its mouth on the 
ground. 

“Lucky I went fishing this morning,” Lige 
laughed, as Nate picked up his knife, too sur¬ 
prised to speak. “I guess I’d better go back the 
way I came. Folks might be shocked at my haul 
of fishes if I went through the town, and I can 
leave some at Phil’s house on my way up by the 
mill, without attracting too much attention.” 

Then he looked back once more and his eyes 
twinkled: “See that thou tellest no man — about 


54 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


the miracle, I mean,” and he disappeared among 
the bushes. 

We looked after him for a minute or two and 
then Nate said: “I think Lige Golden is the most 
wonderful person that ever lived!” 

We looked down at Nate’s knife which he was 
still holding in his hand and wondered if it was 
really a miracle or just one of Lige’s tricks. 


55 



Ill 


Lige is different from any person we ever saw. 
I’ll bet if he was asked to teach a Sunday School 
class, he’d begin by taking a piece of string or 
something out of his pocket and doing a trick; or 
right in the most serious part of the lesson his 
eyes would begin to twinkle and you would know 
that something funny had struck him deep down 
and he couldn’t wait to get it out of his system. 

And yet Lige is always teaching serious les¬ 
sons. He can look awful solemn too, but his eyes 
somehow make one think of a deep spring, with 
every now and then little bubbles of light coming 
up to the surface, through the dark water. 

We asked him about it one noon hour when he 
was eating his lunch on the logs down back of the 
shop. We asked him why he was so different 
from Mr. Hardiman and Deacon Withers and 
other serious minded folks we knew, and he said 
he guessed it was because his mother was a 
daughter of joy, and his father was one of the 
solemn kind. He said he knew his mother was 
gay from her picture, but he wasn’t quite sure 

56 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


about his father; because the only picture he had 
of his father was the one inside himself. 

We thought by that, Lige must have been an 
orphan sometime, but he went right on telling us 
a lot of things about ourselves and everybody, so 
we didn’t get a chance to ask him any more just 
then. 

He said we all had two persons inside of us and 
often it was two persons who couldn’t agree very 
well on the outside, but that was a good thing 
because it was always making us try and settle 
difficulties on the inside which seemed too hard 
to ever get settled on the outside. If a father and 
mother were too much alike — or relations — the 
child would be more apt to be stupid just because 
the parents hadn’t handed him down any diffi¬ 
culties for his mind to work on. So we could see 
the good of having difficulties. 

Lige sees good in everything, and that seems to 
be his worst fault, because he goes round in all 
sorts of company and that gives him a bad name 
with the church people. 

Mr. Hardiman has warned us boys more than 
once not to take too much stock in what Lige 


57 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


says because, as near as he can make out, Lige 
has no sense of good and evil. When we told Lige, 
he laughed right out and then said, “Would Mr. 
Hardiman like me better if I ate more forbidden 
fruit?” That answer puzzled us till Lige ex¬ 
plained what he meant and then it looked quite 
reasonable, but different of course from what we 
had been taught. 

He said that the story of Adam and Eve must 
have been told to show one thing which was al¬ 
ways true in life. If you will call everything 
good, God will walk in the garden of your soul 
and that will be paradise — but if you get the 
idea that everything has to be either all good or 
all bad, you get fussed up inside and lose your 
faith in the one purpose. And that was just what 
happened in the story of the garden of Eden, ac¬ 
cording to Lige. 

Well anyhow, it seems to make Lige different, 
and he goes with everybody and doesn’t get riled 
up and is always the same, though, as I say, his 
jolly side gets mixed up with his solemn side and 
he seems to enjoy one side as much as the other. 

That’s why, maybe, he loves to talk with folks 


58 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 

like Maggie Gillis, which Dad says never was 
more than half baked. Old Maggie lives down 
at the end of the village and Lige often stops 
there for water on his way from work and will sit 
at the well and talk sometimes for hours and for¬ 
get to go home to supper. 

Maggie is Irish by birth and I guess she used 
to be some kind of a Catholic. But when Jack 
Gillis left her with a small baby, the Methodist 
church had to take care of her, for there wasn’t 
a church of her kind anywhere round. She goes 
out doing housework — and takes in washings 
and Lige brings her his mending and gets her to 
cook up things for him. 

I guess he likes to hear her talk, and Lige says 
he can get more religion from her than he can by 
hearing Mr. Hardiman preach, in spite of the fact 
that she is always getting her scripture mixed up 
in such a way that one has to laugh even in 
church. She’ll get to going on in prayer meeting 
till Mr. Hardiman has to give out a hymn or 
something to shut her off. 

One time she began like this, “Oh Lord, I was 
the chiefest of sinners,” and Josh Bean shouted, 


59 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


“Yes, Glory Hallelujah!” Well, everybody 
snickered, but she didn’t see the joke and went 
right on, “But sense I’ve been washed in the 
blood of the lamb, I am the fairest among ten 
thousand, the bright and morning star, and the 
one altogether lovely.” Then, when Mr. Hardi- 
man gave out the hymn, “Wash me in the blood,” 
Nate and I thought we would fall off our seats. 

Then Lige has been trying to teach Maggie’s 
son to walk. He was born a cripple, and kind of 
half witted, so nobody ever took any interest in 
him and he had never taken a step for 18 years, 
but Lige seems to be getting on with him wonder¬ 
ful. And he’s teaching him his alphabet, too. 

That makes me think of Carrie Finny’s case. 
Lige has the queerest ideas about sickness. He 
thinks lots of folks are sick because they don’t 
want to be well, or don’t want to hard enough. 

Carrie had been ailing ever since her father 
died, and couldn’t eat or do anything, without 
getting sick headaches. Well, Lige cured her the 
first week he was here, though Dr. Rush had been 
doctoring her for years. 

Lige said Dr. Rush was all right, as far as he 


60 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


went, but that Carrie was putting three kinds of 
poison into her system that Dr. Rush couldn’t 
take out with all his physic. When we asked 
Lige what the poisons were, he said they were the 
poisons of griefs, regrets, and fears, and that no¬ 
body could be well if he was putting those poisons 
into his system all at one time. 

When we asked him how he did it, he laughed 
and said he didn’t do it at all, he just “forgave 
her her sins.” That sounded funny because Car¬ 
rie had professed sanctification ever since the 
holiness camp meeting three years ago. Well, 
anyhow, he said if Dr. Rush had been able to tell 
her what was really the matter with her she would 
have cured herself long ago, without taking pills 
— and she wouldn’t have been so resigned to 
evil, like she had been all those years. 

Of course saying things like that about the doc¬ 
tor gets Lige kind of in wrong with the best peo¬ 
ple, and it’s the same way with the minister, al¬ 
though Lige seems to treat everybody just alike 
when it comes to telling them what he thinks is 
true. 


61 


IV 


Sunday, June. 

Today, after church, we went as usual to the 
cemetary. Father said he wasn’t feeling very 
well and he guessed he’d stay at home and read 
his Bible. But mother and aunt May went along 
and they took some flowers from the bed in the 
front yard to put on the graves of grandpa and 
grandma and uncle Edmand, and little brothers 
Harry and Carrol who died before I was born. 

Harry was the first baby in our family and I 
guess he made quite an impression on Dad. 
Somehow Dad never likes to go to the cemetary. 
He says it makes him sad, and I guess he doesn’t 
like to be sad like mother and the rest. Harry 
was five when he died and he was such a bright 
child that God took him with diptheria. Father 
said he prayed that if he had another boy he 
would be dull, and I’m the result. 

My, but prayer is grate! I wish sometimes 
however that god didn’t make me quite so dull, 
especially when I get licked in school for not 
knowing my lessons. 


62 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


Of course Carrol came along after Harry, but 
he only got to be a little over a year old and then 
he had the colery and fantum, and God took him, 
so I guess he was started too bright, or else dad 
hadn’t prayed right — or hadn’t had enough faith 
or something. 

Mother always cuts flowers for the graves Sun¬ 
day morning, and if there are enough, she takes 
some to the church, or to some sick people; but 
if there are only a few she always saves them for 
the graves. I hate to have them all cut Sundays, 
they look so nice against the white cottage where 
we live — and Mondays it looks more dismal. 

Today there were not many, because the sea¬ 
son has been so backward, so I told her to let 
Nate go along with me and we would go down in 
the woods, back of the cemetary and find some 
May-flowers. 

There is a wonderful dark woods down back of 
the cemetary, kind of damp and smelly, and 
sometimes Nate and I go there week days and 
play smugglers. There is an old vault there where 
we smuggle in food, and when the folks are sitting 
around the graves and it gets pretty dismal, we 

63 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


make to wander off reading epitafts till we get 
down back of a monument or something, then we 
beat it. 

Well, today that’s what we done. We didn’t 
find much in the woods so we kept wandering 
further and further down, till we came to the edge 
of the cemetary grounds where the sun begins to 
streak in over the wall from the fields below. 

We knew there were lots of dasys and butter¬ 
cups in this field, and though we wasn’t sup¬ 
posed to go outside the cemetary on our Sunday 
excursions, we thought it would be all right, see¬ 
ing as we hadn’t any thing much for the graves, 
to just step over for a few minutes, and get what 
we wanted. 

Well, we had gathered quite a bunch which we 
thought would be nice for the folks, when we 
spied something that looked like a human being 
lying in the grass quite a ways off, and we thought 
maybe some one had had a sunstroke, or laid out 
over from Saturday night, drunk. Phil Shack- 
ford and Bill Lawrence are the town drunkards, 
and sometimes they don’t show up after getting 
paid on Saturday night till Sunday evening, af- 

64 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


ter church time, and anyhow, we thought we 
ought to investigate. 

We felt kind of creepy, too, just coming from 
the grave yard and talking about dead people. 
Maybe the party was dead; and if we felt sure 
he was a dead person, you bet we’d have run a 
mile. That’s foolish of course, when we’d sat on 
graves and eaten lunches in vaults and all that, 
but a fresh dead party seems sort of different from 
one underground a long while. Anyhow we 
crept up pretty cautious, feeling like we might 
turn and run any minute. 

Whoever it was, he was lying there in the tall 
grass on his back, and the hot sun was beating 
down on him, as if he didn’t know enough to get 
up and go where it was shady. We got pretty 
close before we discovered that his eyes were wide 
open, and that it was our old friend Lige Golden. 
He laid just as still, all spralled out, like he had 
the worst kind of a jag on, and didn’t seem to 
notice us at all, but kept gazing with that far 
away look, we had noticed once or twice before. 
We couldn’t make out whether he was in some 
kind of a trance, or whether he was sick or dead or 


65 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


something, so we just stood there gaping, and 
wondering what to do. 

Well, we stood there what seemed quite a long 
time, but I suppose it wasn’t more than a minute 
or two; but I guess it seemed long because we 
were thinking so many things, like one who is 
drowning. And this is a curious thing about 
Elijah. He has just that effect on you at times 
when he isn’t talking at all. So we waited. 

We looked at him, then at each other, then both 
began looking off into space, same as he was. 
We didn’t see anything but the blue sky over¬ 
head, but when we looked back he was smiling so 
we knew he wasn’t dead. 

Dead people don’t smile that way,—that is, till 
after the undertaker comes. I know, for I saw 
aunt Jane who died at our house, and I sneaked 
in and looked over the foot board, when they 
didn’t see me, for every body was standing about 
the bed crying. Her jaw had dropped down and 
her false teeth were sticking out and — well she 
looked just awful. But at the funeral she was 
fixed up beautiful and her cheeks were powdered 
or painted or something, and everybody said she 


66 



He was smiling so we knew he wasn’t dead” 
















LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


looked so natural, and how nice that she died with 
a smile on her face, like she was just going to 
speak. I suppose that was all right too, but I 
don’t think the smile was natural, as she used to 
smile on us children when she came to visit us, 
and brought us candy and things. Perhaps it was 
because aunt died at our house instead of at her 
home in Northfield and our undertaker, while a 
good man in his line, didn’t know aunt Jane as 
we knew her. 

Well, to get back to Elijah. He smiled that 
wonderful smile of his’n when he has something 
interesting to tell, and we smiled back and said, 
“Hello Lige!” 

Then we hemed a little, for he didn’t answer 
right off quick, an Nate stammered out, “We 
thought you was intoxicated.” 

“I am,” he replied, without moving a muscle, 
“lie down with me and have a drink.” 

Well, if you had hit us with a straw you could 
have knocked us both down, we were so surprised 
and weak in the legs. We knew Elijah was a 
temperance man, at least we never saw him 
drunk, although he did drink some wine once at 

67 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


the wedding of Jack Bowker; and most every¬ 
body but him got pretty full, and he was criti¬ 
cised for going with that bunch over at Burdon 
Corners. But he kept on going, and they do say, 
there aint anything like the goings on there that 
there used to be. 

Well, we just laid down there in the grass, as if 
we expected to have a regular spree, and he didn’t 
offer us anything to drink at all. We waited quite 
a spell, and I suppose it was the hot summer sun 
or something that made us feel so wonderful re¬ 
laxed and contented. 

It was so quiet that pretty soon we began to 
hear the bees buzzing round, and the flies, and the 
grass-hoppers, and the grass waving, and the soft 
wind through the leaves, and the tinkle of a cow 
bell, off somewhere, and way down toward the 
village was the rattle of a carriage, and the beat 
of the horse’s hoofs on the road, but all so far 
away that it didn’t seem real at all, and it mixed 
in with all the other soft noises about us, and we 
kept lying there till everything seemed more like 
a dream than anything else. 

And then we began to watch the clouds over- 


68 




LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


head, and they took on the most wonderful 
shapes, like faces, and fairies, and chariots and 
everything, and then a cloud would come across 
the sun and make the place we was lying in all 
cool and shady. And pretty soon the shady place 
would begin to move off down the hill — and over 
the valley; and the river which had been all 
sparkling would become dark, and then we would 
watch the shadow creep up toward Burdon 
Mountain in the east, and the mountain would 
look dark and severe, and then light up again, 
like the face of Elijah did, when he began to 
smile. 

I don’t know why it was that neither of us 
spoke for a long time, but I guess it was one of 
those spells which people say Elijah casts over 
folks. If it was a spell, I don’t think there was 
any great harm in it, although it seemed so won¬ 
derful, and so different from what we had been 
used to on Sundays, but we forgot all about the 
folks back there at the graves, and didn’t think 
about them for a long time after, for just then 
Elijah began to wake up, or come out of his in¬ 
toxicated condition, or trance or whatever it was. 


69 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


And that’s the only harm of the spell, as I can 
see, that it made us forget. 

And the things he talked about, made us for¬ 
get our duty to our parents and to the dead ones 
in the cemetary, — although after a time we did 
think about them, but we kept right on talking, 
till the sun went down behind the hill, and the 
light on the mountain came out wonderful and 
the sky was glorious; and by the time we reached 
the village it was quite dark, and the folks were 
all worried, and mother thought I ought to get a 
whipping. 

Father took me out back of the shed to find a 
shingle, and we sat down on the woodpile, and I 
explained quite a good deal, and told him some 
of the things Elijah said, and finally dad lighted 
his pipe to keep off the mosquitoes and we had a 
pretty good talk. Dad said if I would stay in, 
after school, for a week and write down all I 
could remember about what Elijah said, he would 
let that go as my punishment, although to please 
ma, he would lick me just a little, and I could tell 
her I got the licking. He hit me once or twice 
with a little stick no bigger than a pencil, and I 


70 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


let out a howl like I was most killed; then we both 
laughed, and I ran up to my room, so mother 
wouldn’t see how happy I was feeling — and be¬ 
gan to write my diary. 

This is Tuesday and I’ve been writing this three 
nights already. I’ve still got a lot more to write 
so I’ll go to bed and try and think out the best 
way to write down those things which Elijah 
said. Some things I can write down quite easy 
but not all the things he said are quite as easy to 
explain the meaning of. Dad thinks this is good 
practice, and hopes I’ll make a writer some day 
like Shakspear or Milton or Robinson Cruso. 

In some ways dad reminds me of Elijah. He’s 
kind of easy like, and I think he understands 
boys better than mother, who always wanted a 
girl. But dad’s prayers got the better of her that 
time. Maybe dad is afraid if he licks me too 
much, he’ll make me smart, and then I’ll not be 
long for this world. 

* * * * 

That is a joke, but I didn’t think of it till the 
next day, so I guess I’m dull enough to live a 
while longer. 

My, but as Elijah says, “ain’t life wonderful!” 

71 


V 


Wednesday. 

Life. That’s just what Lige was talking most 
about last Sunday when we lay on the grass. 

Some of the things he said I guess had a dark 
meaning like “Let the dead bury the dead.” He 
looked pretty dark, too, when he said it, and he 
looked up at the cemetary, as if he meant some¬ 
thing about my folks that he didn’t want to say 
right out. Perhaps, though, he knew something 
about some of the dead ones that he didn’t want 
to explain for he brightened up in a minute and 
began talking about the lillies of the valley, two 
or three of which we had picked in the woods. 
They were lying there wilted in the sun and he 
picked one up and sort of petted it like it was a 
poor sick animal he wanted to nurse back to 
health. “Poor thing,” he said, trying to make it 
hold up its head, “how it wanted to live, and to 
grow into the likeness of God and now it isn’t 
even fit to adorn a grave! How much it tried to 
express!” 

I didn’t know before that a flower wanted to do 


72 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


anything at all, but what he said made me feel 
real sorry that we hadn’t left it where it could go 
on to express the “divine image” that he said was 
in each seed. He said that folks were just like 
plants — that way — each of us started from a 
seed and in each seed was a perfect pattern of 
what we were intended to become. 

We answered up that some folks we knew must 
have had a pretty poor pattern, judging by the 
lives they led, Bill Lawrence for instance, who 
never done an honest days work, that he didn’t 
squander it on rum or women or something and 
neglected his large and growing family something 
scandalous, and had to be helped by the church 
and was always getting religion and getting 
prayed for, and then going out and committing 
his sins all over again. 

“He’s a lilly all right,” Nate blurted out, “but 
not the kind you mean, I guess.” 

“Yes, just the kind I mean,” Elijah said — 
and he never smiled. “Bill has a good heart. 
He has the germ — the seed — the pattern, just 
the same as all the rest.” 

“See,” he said as he pointed out a small tree 


73 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


down by the wall, “do you notice how that sap- 
pling is bent around that big rock? That tree 
started with the same kind of pattern as the 
straight tall oak down yonder. What made it 
grow crooked? Was it any fault in the pattern,or 
the life principle? No, it started the same. It 
wanted to do the same. It wanted to unfold in¬ 
to a perfect tree. When it struck that rock it 
couldn’t keep on living and growing if it insisted 
on growing straight just like the other tree. It 
couldn’t grow straight in the place where it was, 
so rather than give up and die it grew crooked. 
Anything wrong in that? Does the tree deserve 
to be punished? 

“Here, look down in that pasture. There are 
a lot of other oaks. Scrubs we call them. What 
makes them scrubs? Same seed. Same pattern. 
Same divine impulse. Barren soil. And if you’ll 
look, you’ll find that the life principle has caused 
little rootlets to pass out from the seed, in every 
direction, looking in vain for those ingredients 
which are necessary to make up a perfect tree. 

“Look at that big oak over in the meadow. 
Fertile soil. Don’t have to go far for what it 


74 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


needs and the roots can go down deep where 
there is plenty of water.” 

Then he said something about “living water, 
that if a man drink of it he shall never thirst.” 
I remembered the exact words for I had it in Sun¬ 
day School as a golden text, and it seemed so fun¬ 
ny that it took a man by the name of Golden to 
explain it to me. My Sunday School teacher 
didn’t make much out of it, but I guess she didn’t 
know much about nature, being only a farmer’s 
wife. 

Well, anyhow, he said Bill Lawrence hadn’t 
been cultivated right. The great magician hadn’t 
come along yet who understood what ingredients 
was lacking. Maybe Bill drank just because he 
had such a fine nature that he couldn’t stand up 
under the strain of life without a stimulant, and 
he made the mistake of thinking whiskey was a 
stimulant. He said whiskey puts you to sleep 
and makes you dead to the world, and has at least 
the advantage sometimes of keeping one from 
suicide, until one got religion, or something to 
take the place of it. 

I was wondering what that something was, that 


75 


LIGE GOLDEN—THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


could take the place of whiskey and religion. 
Knowing that Elijah was not a church member, 
I began to think that was what he had been tak¬ 
ing that afternoon, that made him so quiet before 
we came up, and he told us about being intoxi¬ 
cated. He didn’t act like anyone who was drunk 
either, but I didn’t dare ask, for fear that he 
might think I thought he was a dope fiend or 
something like that. 

I guess he must have read my thoughts, for he 
looked far away for a minute, and then he said, 
kind of quizzical like — “Perhaps you think I’ve 
had food or drink which ye know not of, but 
honest indian, I was only intoxicated with the 
day. Isn’t it immense up here?” Then he stood 
up and let out a regular war whoop as if to wake 
the dead. 

That was when I first thought of the folks back 
there, and the cemetary, and the fact that it was 
Sunday and all that. We had never heard any 
one give a war whoop on Sunday before, and we 
were shocked and frightened half out of our wits. 
That is what makes Elijah so queer even to us 
boys who know him so much better than the rest 

76 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


of the villagers. He is always doing such star¬ 
tling and unexpected things,—and why he would 
do such a thing on Sunday eve, right on the bor¬ 
der of the cemetary is more than either Nate or I 
can explain. 

We looked every which way, for something to 
happen and then he must have read our thoughts 
again, for he turned and looked toward the cem¬ 
etary and we all three stood there as if we ex¬ 
pected somebody to come walking down out of 
their graves. It was getting dark and I knew the 
folks must have gone home without us so I didn’t 
worry on that score. Then just as if there was 
nothing to prevent, he gave another whoop and 
listened for the echo to come back to us from over 
the wall. 

“Never mind,” he said “Its no use!” 

“What’s no use?” I asked in a whisper. 

“They won’t wake up, though the stones cry 
out!” 

We turned toward the village and it seemed as 
if the stones under our feet cried out all the way, 
for every little noise startled us, and I suppose it 


77 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


was our guilty conscience telling us that we had 
been desecrating God’s holy day. 

Elijah said a lot more things but I’m too tired 
now to write any more. I’m going to say my 
prayers — good and regular, and go to bed. I 
wonder if Elijah says his’n. I’m going to ask him 
sometimes, because it took some courage anyhow 
to let out a yell like that on a Sunday night near 
a cemetary. I don’t know anyone else who would 
have dared, not even the minister and I’m sure 
Bill Lawrence wouldn’t, even in his drunkest mo¬ 
ments. 


78 


VI 


Friday. 

I asked Elijah yesterday if he ever said his 
prayers and he gave me the strangest answers 
ever. First off he laughed right out, and when I 
said I didn’t see anything in prayers to laugh 
about he laughed all the more, and asked why he 
shouldn’t laugh and pray at the same time? I 
told him I thought it would be sacreligious and 
he answered “Would it be sacreligious for a mon¬ 
key to laugh when he saw a big fine cocanut tree 
full of ripe cocanuts about suppertime?” 

Then he laughed some more and just then 
Deacon Withers passed by on the other side on 
his way to the Friday night prayermeeting. He 
looked round at us terrible solemn like, when he 
heard Lige laughing, and you could see that he 
thought we ought to be going to prayermeeting. 

Lige stopped laughing and watched the deacon 
hobbling up the street toward the church, and 
then, after a minute or two, I got up courage 
enough to ask him if he thought it was right to 
make fun about prayers. 


79 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


He looked at me with that queer look of his, 
eyes kind of twinkly, and yet sort of sad, and 
finally he spoke in a dreamy kind of way — 

“Don’t you think its funny, the way Deacon 
Withers has been praying every morning, noon 
and night, all his life, and then going round with¬ 
out expecting anything good? Honest now, just 
think of it. There isn’t a day that he doesn’t pray 
for the salvation of the heathens, and the feeding 
of all the hungry people everywhere, not to men¬ 
tion the conversion of every sinner in the village, 
by name, and then he goes about with his face all 
drawn down and his jaw set as if he was con¬ 
vinced that none of the nice things he was asking 
for could ever possibly come true. 

“Why, even Phil Shackford in his worst mo¬ 
ments has more excuse for praying than the old 
deacon. The deacon owns mortgages on half the 
town, and he could have almost anything he 
wanted without praying at all, and as for feeding 
the starving world and converting the heathern, 
the deacon w’as only passing the buck when he 
asked the Almighty to do it. It made the deacon 
feel better of course, because it eased him up a bit, 


80 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


and you could see by his face, he lived under an 
awful strain, because he had never really learned 
to expect something nice to happen.” 

“That was real faith — expecting good instead 
of expecting evil. When one expects something 
good doesn’t it make him feel good? Well I 
guess.” 

“But Phil, when he had had one of his de¬ 
spondent spells, and taken liquor, thinking it 
would help him, and then, after he had come to, 
and found he’d been in a fight and he was all beat 
up and had a headache and a sick stomach, and 
looked round on his neglected home, and hungry 
family, and thought of all the fine dreams of his 
boyhood and how, for some reason, he had failed 
in everything, then in despair he cries out ‘Oh, 
God, be merciful to a poor miserable dog, and 
worm of the dust’ and all that,—why, don’t you 
see? Although he is really praying from the 
heart it can’t do him much real good, because 
calling himself dirty names, doesn’t make him ex¬ 
pect anything better. At best he is only asking 
for mercy, and so that is all he gets.” 

Elijah said quite a lot about the word faith not 


81 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


being much use now-a-days because it was made 
to mean believing in ghost stories, or something 
which wasn’t reasonable — but that the real 
meaning of faith was expecting good things. It 
is just as easy to expect good things as bad things; 
and a lot easier if we once get the idea that this 
world is all God’s world, and that God has only 
one great purpose, and that One Purpose runs 
through everything. 

Of course it was hard to reconcile some things 
with the goodness of God; but Phil Shackford 
was no harder to understand than Deacon With¬ 
ers, and both were no harder to reconcile than 
bunions; — but a lot more interesting. 

He said the Deacon Was getting just the kind 
of experience he needed, no doubt, and so was 
Phil Shackford. Some lessons come mighty hard, 
and we ought to be thankful we didn’t have to go 
through either of their experiences, but could go 
right on with our own, after learning from them 
what to shun. 

“Then you don’t believe much in prayer?” one 
of the bystanders asked Lige, for quite a number 
who had come down for their mail had stopped in 


82 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


front of the store to listen to Lige’s sermon. 

“Sure I do,” responded Lige. “Greatest thing 
In the world. Pray without ceasing, lest ye enter 
into temptation.” 

Some of the men laughed right out at this, and 
began to banter Lige. “When you going to start 
prayers, Deacon Lige?” one of them shouted. 
“Maybe we might like to join you.” 

Lige grinned a little at this, and finally an¬ 
swered with a funny drawl, for he knew they were 
stringing him. “Wall, there’s nothing like keep¬ 
ing well prayed up in advance, but if you are 
really a serious inquirer, Jase Perkins, come up to 
the house Sunday evening and I’ll give you your 
first lessons.” 

At this everybody laughed, and the party broke 
up, but Nate and I watched Lige, and saw him 
stroll down opposite the blacksmith shop and 
out onto the little point where the Dishmill 
brook flows into the millpond. There is a deep 
hole there, where we go in swimming, and some¬ 
times, nights, Lige sits out there and catches bull- 
pouts for his breakfast. 

It was a fine moonlight night and after we’d 
83 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


wandered about the village a while, and there was 
not much going on because it was prayermeeting 
night, Nate spoke up and said, “Let’s go and find 
Lige and ask him some more questions?” 

So we went out on the point and sure enough 
there he was, sitting in the moonlight, watching 
his bob which he had thrown out on the pond 
with a hand line. He had built a little smoulder¬ 
ing fire on the edge of the water to keep off the 
mosquitoes, and to attract the fish as well, and 
as we stole out of the bushes, quiet like, and came 
suddenly on his quaint figure, with the curling 
smoke, and the redish cinders, and the moonlight 
on the pond, and the mist which lay over it, 
through which we could imagine all sorts of 
spooky things against the dark bank opposite, 
well, we just couldn’t say a word for a minute, 
but stood quietly wondering who should break 
the silence. Lige broke it, for without looking up 
or showing any sign that he knew we were there 
at all he nearly startled us out of our wits by say¬ 
ing in the most natural sort of voice, 

“Let us pray.” 

We waited breathlessly, expecting he would 
84 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 

start praying like we often heard the deacon down 
in his barn, and wondering if he would shout so 
loud that the villagers would all hear, and know 
he was at his devotions, but he never made a 
sound, and never moved his lips, and then after 
what seemed an awful long time he burst into 
laughter, as if he had heard the funniest kind of a 
joke. Well he laughed and laughed, all by him¬ 
self, and I don’t know when he would have 
stopped, but just then his bob went down out of 
sight and he jumped up and pulled in a wallop¬ 
ing big bull-pout. 

We thought this was a good time to introduce 
ourselves so we ran up, and Nate blurted out, 
“Did you get what you were praying for?” 

“I always do, and so does everybody” Lige an¬ 
swered as he baited his hook and threw it back in 
the pond. “Sit down boys and lets have a season 
of prayer.” 

“Can you catch fish better when you pray?” 
Nate asked after we had got seated on the bank. 

“Sure, any thing,” Lige answered without tak¬ 
ing his eyes off the bob. “You fellows just follow 
me round as you are doing for a while and per- 


85 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


haps you’ll learn to catch something bigger than 
bull-pouts.” 

“What, suckers?” Nate blurted out. 

“Most men are suckers sometime during their 
existence, and that’s nothing to be ashamed of 
either,” he laughed. 

He sat still quite a while after this, and neither 
of us spoke. We kept wondering I suppose 
whether he was sort of joking, or whether he was 
serious, and perhaps a little annoyed that we had 
disturbed him in his fishing and his devotions. 
But Nate had seen him pull out that big walloper 
of a bull-pout and he wasn’t going to let his 
chance slip, to find out how it was done, so finally 
he got up courage to ask him again, how it was 
done, and if praying had anything to do with it. 

Lige sat thoughtful a minute and then seemed 
to forget all about the fishing. He leaned over 
and looked at us with those wonderful searching 
eyes of his’n, so full of a sort of sadness and 
twinkling all the time, as if he wanted to laugh 
but was holding it back for some very great and 
noble reason, and wondering all the time if we 
could possibly understand. 


86 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


“You remember what I told Jase Perkins 
about coming up to the house Sunday night? 
Do you think he’ll come?” 

“I guess not,” we answered, “he’s too much 
afraid of old Aunt Sarah Woods’ ghost.” 

“Well, I guess that’s right,” answered Lige, 
“but what is more, I don’t think he wants to learn 
anything enough to make any sacrefice. If he 
did, he’d get over his fear all right. Jase gets 
about all he ever prays for, and that is an easy 
going, lazy, good for nothing life. His fear of 
ghosts gives him about all the thrills he needs to 
break up the monotony of his lazy life. He likes 
it, of course, or he wouldn’t hang on to it, same as 
a bull-pout likes worms or a hog likes buttermilk. 
What’s that saying about ‘casting pearls before 
swine?’ If he comes, though, I shall know he 
really wants something more, and I’ll give him 
the best that’s in me.” 

“But you fellows are different. ‘Seek and you 
shall find.’ You found me tonight the same as 
you did last Sunday, and the other times, because 
you know I’ve got something that you want, even 
though it’s only the secret of catching bull-pouts.” 

87 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


And he laughed good naturedly — and made us 
feel at ease and perfectly friendly all around. 

Then he went on. “No,” he said “that partic¬ 
ular bull-pout was an accident, but the fact that 
I’m a good fisherman is no accident. That came 
as the result of fervent prayer. Not the kind you 
hear in the pulpit, or down by Deacon Withers 
barn, but real prayer, the only kind that counts.” 

“Could you teach us to pray — like that?” we 
asked. 

“We all pray — like that,” he answered. 

“And can one get anything he wants if he 
prays right?” we asked. 

“Well,” Lige answered, “you can’t get huckle¬ 
berries off a gooseberry bush, or cabbages from 
turnips.” 

Of course we all laughed at this, it was so ri¬ 
diculous. 

“Well,” Lige went on, “it does sound ridicu¬ 
lous doesn’t it? But its no more idiotic than 
some of the things people pray for. Imagine Dea¬ 
con Withers floating about with a white robe and 
a harp, and feather wings, singing from morning 
till night and actually scattering beams of sun- 


88 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


shine and joy. Of course he says prayers for 
something of the sort, but that is not really what 
Deacon Withers wants, right here and now, and 
he doesn’t want it anyhow, till he has to have it. 
You remember when he had a stoppage of the 
bowels and Dr. Rush said nothing would save 
him from heaven but a miracle. Did he trust the 
Lord to take him home? I guess not. He sent 
for the best doctor in a hundred miles. And 
when he got better, how he writhed over the fact 
that it had cost him such a lot of money. He said 
Dr. Fairbrother was a robber for charging him 
twenty-five dollars, when he had spent the best 
part of three days coming and going all the way 
from Manchester, N. H.” 

“No, Deacon Withers gets what he really prays 
for in his heart, not what he prays about when he 
stands up in church, for the one thing Deacon 
Withers wants is to be affluant and fore handed, 
and a model church member according to the 
standards he has been brought up to.” 

“Don’t you think God hears his prayers,” I 
asked, “when he prays so loud we can hear him 
clear across the street?” 


89 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


“God has no time to listen to prayers that don’t 
mean anything,” Lige answered, “and he has so 
arranged things in this world that every real 
prayer counts, and counts and counts. It is a 
matter of law and nobody can change it. Yes, 
even an evil prayer counts, and every thought, 
whether it be good or evil leaves some mark which 
will always be a part of you wherever you go. 

“Mind, I don’t blame the deacon either. He is 
a good man because he lives consistent with his 
standards of what constitutes a righteous man, 
and a Christian. He was taught by others who 
had the same ideas, and, worse yet, he was taught 
that the wickedest thing in the world was to de¬ 
part from what he was taught. You see there is 
no hope that he will ever be any different because 
he has followed and worshiped one set of pictures 
in his mind so long, that it would be hard to con¬ 
vince him that there were any others worth 
while.” 

“Not even if we prayed for him,” I suggested. 

“Well now, that’s an idea, suppose we try,” 
Lige said, and he sat thoughtful a minute. “I 
wonder if it would be like expecting figs from 


90 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


thistles. Come on up to the house Sunday night 
and I’ll tell you how,” he added as he pulled in 
his line. “I guess I won’t pray for any more fish 
tonight when that one is more than enough for 
my breakfast.” 

“Church was just letting out, as we went up 
through the village. We passed the deacon, who 
looked at the bull pout and scowled. “Better ha’ 
been in church young men,” he said, as he 
stamped along, hitting his cane hard on the walk 
as he went. 

I wonder what he would have said if he had 
known that we were going to hold a special meet¬ 
ing to pray for him. 


9i 


VII 

Well, we went to Lige’s house Sunday night 
and it was some time, I can tell you; but before 
that, we had met him in the afternoon up on the 
hillside near the camp and he had told us all 
about how to pray for Deacon Withers. We are 
going to try it out on him and Gee! Its as good 
as a regular stunt! If it will work on him I guess 
one can get about anything he wants out of this 
world, that is, anything worth while if it is rea¬ 
sonable. 

That is just what Lige said. Its got to be rea¬ 
sonable, and worth while, or its no go. But when 
you come to think of it, isn’t that about all any¬ 
body really wants anyhow? 

He said if the thing we wanted wasn’t reason¬ 
able we couldn’t really have faith in it, no matter 
what we pretended to profess about religion; and 
if it wasn’t worth while we would never be per¬ 
sistent enough to get it anyhow. 

So, first off, we have to think of something we 
want real bad and make sure it is reasonable. 
Then we must go inside our secret chamber; — 


92 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 

that is what Lige calls the most inside part of 
one’s mind — and keep picturing it all out just 
the way everything would be if we really had the 
thing we were wishing for. 

Lige said praying wasn’t much different from 
wishing if you wished hard enough and long 
enough. But if you wished hard enough and long 
enough, you’d be praying for the thing, in spite of 
yourself, and it didn’t make any difference what 
church you belonged to. If you do it right, it 
works and if you don’t, it won’t. 

Well then, if you picture it all out before you 
go to sleep at night, you dream about it and that 
makes it a little more real. And when you wake 
up you say to yourself, “Today is the day that 
will bring me nearer to the goal.” Then, you get 
up and before you know it, you’ll be acting just 
as if you really had it. 

That was real faith. Getting to expect a thing 
so much that half the time you’ll imagine its 
yours already. And of course it is true, in a 
sense, because if you can make it seem real 
enough inside your secret chamber, it belongs to 


93 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


you anyway, and you can begin to enjoy it, and 
nobody can take it from you. 

Lige says, the things inside are just as real, in 
their way, as the things outside are real in their 
way. And perhaps he’s right. 

So Lige said we must not think of Deacon 
Withers as cross or harsh or hard fisted any more, 
because even our thoughts would make him seem 
more so than he really was, and our actions would 
affect him sooner or later; but we must try to 
picture him in our minds as a nice, kind hearted, 
generous, smiling old gentleman who had, deep 
down in him, all the good qualities anybody has. 
He said it was all there — there in the seed — and 
we only had to believe it enough and our words 
and actions would draw it out of him, just natu¬ 
rally, like the sun makes the plants grow. 

It made us laugh at first when he told us how 
we were to think of the deacon as a nice, kind 
hearted old gentleman. Then, it seemed like such 
a hard thing to do, we thought Lige must be fool¬ 
ing. But Lige said it was the easiest thing in the 
world when once you got started, and lots of fun 
besides. It was like planting seeds and giving 


94 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


them water and sunshine and then watching them 
grow. 

Of course it wasn’t us who made them grow. 
We could only plant and tend and then wait for 
the harvest but the harvest was sure, if the plants 
got the right care. Anyhow, there could be no 
harm in planting good seeds, so why not try what 
we could do? Of course we musn’t expect mira¬ 
cles — That would be like figs from thistles. 

And we mustn’t expect too much all at once. 
What we must do is to prove the law, little by lit¬ 
tle, and step by step, and the game will get more 
and more interesting all the time. If we learn to 
use faith in little things pretty soon we will be 
using it in big things and that is the way to be¬ 
come master over all things. 

Then, when we asked him, if he thought we 
could become Kings and great rulers over mil¬ 
lions of people, he laughed, and said, that to be 
a great ruler over other people was not half as 
big a thing as to be a ruler over the kingdom 
within each one of us. No matter how great a 
man appeared to be in the eyes of the world, if he 


95 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


hadn’t learned the little trick of conquering the 
great kingdom within, he was a failure. 

We must get the idea that, deep down in the 
secret chamber, we are near the source of all 
things. 

“What about praying to God?” Nate asked, 
because Lige hadn’t said a word about God and 
we wondered if that was what he was driving at. 

“That is just what we’ve been talking about” 
Lige answered and he sat still a long time think¬ 
ing and looking far off. Finally he turned his big 
eyes to us and asked just as simply as anything, 
“Have you ever seen God?” 

I guess we didn’t know just what to answer — 
we were so surprised, but he said it just as if it 
was the simplest thing in the world, and he 
seemed to be waiting for an answer. 

My mind was running over all the pictures I 
had seen in the family bible, and one on a stained 
glass window of a church I went to once. I 
wasn’t sure though whether it was God the 
father, or God the son. 

Nate was the first to speak. He remembered 
a golden text he had learned in Sunday School 

96 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


about the pure in heart seeing God, and he re¬ 
peated it kind of bashful like, and then added, 
“But, if thats the case, I guess mighty few of us 
will get a chance to see him.” 

“When?” Lige asked, kind of droll. 

“After we’re dead of course, but if we don’t 
join the church, we won’t get to see him, even 
then, according to Mr. Hardiman.” Nate said 
this kind of solemn, for of course that was what 
he had been taught. 

“And if you happen to live to be a very, very 
old man, it will be such a long, long wait even at 
that,” Lige drawled out in his funny way and his 
eyes twinkled like he really thought it was a joke 
that Nate would have to wait so long before see¬ 
ing God. 

Well sir, we all laughed right out and it seemed 
so funny to have laughed just then, that we 
laughed some more. I suppose if some one should 
laugh right out in a funeral it would seem funny, 
and maybe it would make the others laugh in 
spite of the solemn occasion — and really, thats 
how we felt. We didn’t know why we laughed 
but we did, and Lige laughed too. 


97 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


I can’t imagine Mr. Hardiman laughing out 
like that and I’ll bet he would have talked to us 
pretty severe, but Lige was different. He seemed 
to understand. Lige thinks that we don’t have 
to be dead to see God. 

Well, he didn’t say much more just then, but I 
guess he knew we would be thinking about what 
he had told us that afternoon down by the brook, 
the Sunday after Charlie Whiting fell in the Mill¬ 
pond,— how we should see something of God 
every day. 

And now he had told us about how to get an¬ 
swers to our prayers by going into the “secret 
chamber.” Maybe, too, he thought how we could 
learn to picture God in our minds the same way 
we were going to picture the Deacon, but he 
didn’t say so — he just left us thinking, and wan¬ 
dered off by himself into the woods. 


98 


VIII 

We had been up in the edge of the woods not 
far from the camp, overlooking Lige’s house, and 
the way we got to go was that Nate’s folks had 
gone over to Barnet to a funeral and I was al¬ 
lowed to go home with Nate after Sunday School 
and stay with him all night. Nate’s sister went 
to walk with her beau, so we hooked a few cookies 
and things, and went up on the hill where, before 
long, we met Lige. 

Lige was always wandering round Sundays. 
Mr. Hardiman asked Lige once why he didn’t 
come to church and hear him preach, and Lige 
sort of turned it off by saying that he had to go 
into the wilderness, once a week, to be tempted 
of the devil; but I guess what he meant was just 
the opposite. 

Lige told us, that it always made him feel like 
committing some crime to hear Mr. Hardiman 
preach, he talked so much about the devil and so 
little about the really good things of life. He told 
us that he had to get up into the hills in order to 
keep his faith strong in the one purpose. After 


99 



LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


working in the blacksmith shop all the week and 
listening to all the small and mean talk, it just 
braced him up wonderful to get away on the 
mountain. 

But the folks in the village can’t understand 
it at all. They think Lige must be up to some 
mischief. Two men tried to follow him once and 
I guess they got all they bargained for, and more, 
for they say Lige took them way over Burdon 
Mountain and down over the ledges, then through 
a swamp and finally, after leading them way up 
near the jumping off place on Granville Moun¬ 
tain, without stopping, he turned and led them 
back the way they came. The men couldn’t go 
to work the next day they were so lame, but Lige 
was just as fresh as ever. 

As I say, the folks can’t understand any hard¬ 
working man doing that sort of thing for pleasure, 
and so they are suspicious of Lige. Most of the 
men in the village lie round Sundays and rest or 
go to church, but anyhow, they don’t do any more 
than they have to, and some of them that don’t go 
to church play cards or get drunk. 

Of course we boys like to wander off in the 


ioo 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


woods and over the hills whenever we get a 
chance and so we often meet Lige. Sometimes 
two or three bunches of fellows get together, some 
from down at the Ville and some from over at the 
Corners. Lately I guess they’ve got to coming 
over on our hill hoping to meet Lige, same as we 
do. Sometimes we’ve had as many as twenty 
maybe — all sitting around and listening to Lige 
telling about his travels, and everything, and 
sometimes Lige does tricks for them, even if it is 
Sunday. 

The boys go home and talk more about the 
tricks, I guess, than anything else and so the folks 
don’t realize how much good Lige is doing by 
teaching them all the other things about life. 
Anyhow there’s been quite a lot of talk against 
Lige lately because he has so many boys follow¬ 
ing him about the way he does. They say he is 
corrupting the minds of the youth, but we know 
better. 

Well, as I said before, Lige walked away into 
the woods leaving us thinking. We sat there quite 
a while, talking over what he had said, then we 


IOI 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


thought we would go through the woods to the 
camp and eat our lunch. 

The camp is on the back side of the woods 
looking toward the mountain, and the trail up the 
mountain, which starts back of Lige’s house, 
passes pretty near the hut we boys have built for 
a camp, out of fir boughs and birch bark and 
things. The hut is built into a ledge and is sort 
of hidden among the trees. There is a natural 
fire place in the ledge so we can build a fire with¬ 
out danger — and the smoke makes off through 
a crack in the rocks. 

The front of the camp is left open so we can get 
a wonderful view of the mountain through the 
bushes, without being seen by folks who come 
along the trail. 

We have some secret hiding places in the rocks 
where we store away provisions, so we’ll always 
be provided for if we get caught in the rain or 
something. 

We come up here in vacation time, and Satur¬ 
days, and have great times, playing we are wild 
indians, and fighters, and outlaws, like Jesse 
James, and Sitting Bull, and General Custer. 


102 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


Just outside the bushes, below the camp, there 
is a fine spring with a little clearing about it which 
makes a dandy place for a picnic when we don’t 
care to eat in the hut. 

We had just brought our provisions down near 
the spring and were laying them out on a little 
birch bark table we had made, when who should 
appear but Lige, out of the woods. So he had not 
forgotten us. He came and sat down just as 
natural as if he had been invited and began to un¬ 
roll from his handkerchief his own lunch and 
place it along with ours. 

“What do you say, boys, if we take a good 
climb after dinner?” he suggested, as he looked 
away toward the mountain. 

“That would be great,” we agreed. 

I had never climbed the mountain on Sun¬ 
day and I couldn’t help thinking what would hap¬ 
pen if I should fall and break my leg or some¬ 
thing— because everybody would say it was a 
judgment of God for breaking the Sabbath. Of 
course Lige would say that we were on God’s holy 
place — even on the mountain, same as when 
Moses saw the burning bush, and God told him he 


103 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


was standing, wherever he was, on holy ground. 

Well, we didn’t worry much, because it was 
such a wonderful warm and still afternoon, with 
the sun shining against the side of the mountain 
and lighting up the autumn foliage, and the gray 
rocks; and everything covered with a soft bluish 
haze — all looked so inviting, — and if one want¬ 
ed to think so, it might have been something like 
heaven it was so beautiful. So we really couldn’t 
see any harm in it, even if others might object. 

Well, we were sitting there drinking in the 
beauty, and we had just taken a drink at the 
spring when we heard somebody calling “Lige.” 

Our first thought was to keep quiet but Lige 
stood up and was about to answer the call. Then 
he stopped a minute as if to apologize, — “Some 
friends of mine from over at the Corners,” he 
said. “Don’t mind, — there’s enough for all.” 

Then he shouted back and pretty soon out 
came quite a pack—eight or nine boys and young 
men that we only knew a little bit — over from 
the Corners. 

Lige said, “Sit right down and have lunch with 
us. Lucky we brought a good supply.” 


104 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


I guess we thought Lige was crazy. We only 
had a few sugar cookies and five sailor biscuit, be¬ 
sides a couple of smoked herring, and Lige had a 
small loaf of brown bread and some cheese. But 
Lige put his hands in his coat pockets and what 
do you think? he brought out two raw carrots 
and a raw turnip and began to cut them up into 
pieces with his jackknife. 

“Plenty of food — enough for a regiment” he 
laughed, “if you only know how to make good use 
of it. I’ll tell you how” he said. “First, every 
one get a good drink of water at the spring and 
then gather round the festal board.” 

Well, sir, you would have thought it was a 
royal feast if you could have heard Lige talk. 

He began by telling us that a most wonderful 
miracle was about to take place. Then he gave 
everyone a piece of raw carrot and told him to 
hold it in his hand till he said the word. We all 
sat around laughing and feeling foolish I guess 
holding that piece of carrot and wondering what 
he was going to do. We thought of course it was 
some trick. 

Then he told us to look at that piece of carrot 


105 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


very carefully because a most wonderful magical 
change was about to take place, and that piece of 
carrot was about to turn into human flesh and 
blood. Well, we looked at it, but it staid just 
plain carrot till he told us to place it in our 
mouths and begin to chew. Then he told us to 
chew and chew and chew as long as we could keep 
it up. If any went down our throats it must be 
so natural and easy like, that we would hardly 
know it. He said the more we chewed the better 
the miracle could take place because the carrot 
had to be mixed with a lot of other things in the 
mouth and stomach before the change into flesh 
and blood could take place. 

Well it gradually dawned on us what he meant, 
and then we went on laughing and talking and 
chewing and I guess we forgot all about not be¬ 
ing enough for all. 

Lige kept on telling us about the miracle, and 
how the food was not only changed into flesh and 
blood but into spirit and life. Then he would ask 
us to think, before we took a mouthful, and de¬ 
cide what we wanted it to turn into, whether bad 
thoughts or good thoughts. 

106 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


Then he said a lot about chewing our food, how 
it was necessary, if one wanted to keep his teeth 
and other organs in good condition, to use them 
just the same as one would use his muscle if he 
wanted to keep strong. So carrots and other raw 
food were good for us, partly because it made us 
chew more. Then he showed us his wonderful 
muscles and told us how he kept them strong by 
working at the forge and by tramping in the hills 
and everything. 

But he said there was something more, which 
was just as important and that was, to keep hap¬ 
py. One couldn’t keep strong if he was unhappy, 
or have a good digestion either. So we had to 
find some way to keep happy, if we wanted to be 
well and strong. Of course one might be made 
unhappy by eating too much — and on the other 
hand people sometimes gorged themselves on food 
and drink because of unhappiness, hoping it 
would relieve them. A good appetite didn’t al¬ 
ways mean good digestion because, if it made us 
overload our stomachs with badly chewed food, 
we were just inviting trouble. 

It wasn’t half so hard to be happy, if one had 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


just the right amount of the right kind of food, 
and ate it in the right way, but of course that 
wasn’t all there was to say about happiness. He 
said we shouldn’t depend on luck and chance for 
our happiness, but should go out and work for it 
just as we work for food, because it is necessary 
for our health. 

Well he said a lot more things which I haven’t 
time to set down now or I would never get to the 
other things I started out to tell about, but he 
said that we get back from the world, just what 
we give out to it. If we give out good thoughts, 
good thoughts will come back to us, because 
thoughts are like seeds and if planted in fertile 
soil will give back sometimes a hundred fold. 

And evil thoughts are like seeds too, and bring 
back a crop of weeds and thorns. Then one of 
the boys asked Lige “Where do you get the seeds 
in the first place?” And Lige sat thoughtful a 
long time before he answered. Finally he said 
kind of solemn and dreamlike, almost as if talk¬ 
ing to himself — “There is only one source. On¬ 
ly one. Only one.” 

The boys sat kind of hushed, when Lige spoke 
108 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


those words till he finally brightened up and said 
suddenly — for the food was all gone, “Now our 
hunger is satisfied, let’s take a tramp over the 
mountain and prove what our food can do for us. 
I’ll bet you’ll all agree you never felt better after 
a hearty meal.” Then he added kind of impres¬ 
sive, 

“Remember and do these things after I’m gone. 
Remember your friend Lige, and this meal we’ve 
had, for perhaps we shall never all be together 
again. Remember the miracle — and that it is 
in your power to change the food you eat into 
just those things you desire, not only into flesh 
and blood but into happiness and joy and faith in 
the one source of all things.” That was what 
he said as near as I can remember and it made us 
feel kind of sad, thinking that perhaps he might 
be going away where we should see him no more. 

But we said nothing, and pretty soon he rose, 
and stretched himself in the sun, and led off up 
the mountain, while we followed him like sheep 
along the trail. 


109 


IX 

We went up on the mountain just as easy as 
anything and everyone said they never felt strong¬ 
er or more like climbing. Some of the boys must 
have thought that the miracle was in feeding so 
many people on such a small amount of food,— 
anyhow, they have been telling it, that way, over 
at the Corners, for the story has already got 
round that there were more than a hundred in the 
party. It’s funny how fast a story like that 
grows, — as Lige says — like seed planted on fer¬ 
tile soil. 

I guess the folks are beginning to think Lige 
uses magic or hypnotism or something on us boys, 
but that is because they are too ready to believe 
all the bad stories they hear and don’t half try to 
find out the truth. 

We had a wonderful view from the top. The 
country was spread out like a map as far as the 
eye could reach, and the farms and villages looked 
so tiny and the people so much like insects crawl¬ 
ing about, it was hard to realize how important 


no 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


they really were, or how serious were all their 
troubles and fears. 

It’s true what Lige says — there is nothing like 
getting up in the mountain to relieve one’s mind 
of worry. We could almost imagine that the 
kingdoms of the earth were spread out beneath 
our feet and we were the rulers of them all. 

Then, we lay on the ground a long time watch¬ 
ing the clouds floating over our heads till the sun 
began to get low and we began to think of home. 

Lige took us down by another trail through a 
wonderful dark, lonesome ravine on the north 
side of the mountain where there are big boulders 
and rotten trunks of trees everywhere, all damp 
and mossy, and showed us a deep cave he had dis¬ 
covered which he called the devil’s den. It ran 
way back in the rocks and was so dark we 
couldn’t see how far in it went. 

We had great fun stumping one another to go 
in and pull out the devil by the horns. Some of 
the boys lighted matches and after a while we be¬ 
gan to get bold enough to go in quite a ways. 
Then something happened which sent us scam¬ 
pering back as if the old nick was after us. 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


At first it sounded like some animal inside rat¬ 
tling around, then we heard heavy foot falls. Af¬ 
ter listening a while we went back and got a long 
pole and poked it as far as we could reach. 

Suddenly there came out the most blood cur¬ 
dling roar you ever heard — followed by a lot of 
other sounds like cat calls and dogs barking and 
everything. 

Well, you can better bet, we tumbled over one 
another to get out, and away to a safe hiding 
place. We expected bears and wildcats and every 
kind of animal to come piling out of that dark 
hole, chasing us. We scattered in all directions, 
behind rocks and trees and things, and it was 
quite a while before we had courage to come back 
into the open. Then we discovered Lige was not 
with us. 

Nothing seemed to be coming out of the cave 
so we worked up a little nearer but keeping at a 
safe distance. 

Then we called “Lige,” and what do you think? 
Lige’s voice answered back, right out of the 
mouth of that cave. We couldn’t believe our ears, 
but it was laughing and said “Come on in boys, 


112 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


there is nothing here to be afraid of, I’m the 
only devil there is, and I didn’t mean to scare 
you so badly — honest I didn’t. I thought you’d 
know my voice. Come on in, I’m perfectly safe.” 

Well, it took a good deal of coaxing to get any 
of us started. We shouted for Lige to come on 
out, but he said he couldn’t get out. We’d have 
to come in after him. Well — after a time one of 
the older boys from the Corners started in, light¬ 
ing matches as he went. Pretty soon he began to 
laugh and called us to follow. 

Well sir, what do you think? When we got in 
quite a little way, we looked up, and there was a 
hole about a foot square, with clear sky showing, 
and Lige was up there looking down. And Lige 
hadn’t been in the cave at all, but had slipped 
round overhead, behind some rocks, and had been 
dropping things down into the cave and shout¬ 
ing through the hole. 

We had a good laugh at one another and 
thought what a good story it would make to tell 
around the village, but Lige said it was like all 
other devil stories, there was no devil in them, 
once you got at the real truth. Truth and error 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


were like light and darkness. One didn’t have to 
chase darkness out in order to make room for 
light. All one had to do was to let his light shine 
and darkness and error would just simply melt 
away into nothingness. 

“Then why did you call that cave the devil’s 
den, if you don’t believe there is a devil?” one of 
the young men asked. 

“That’s just the reason,” Lige laughed back, 
“because there weren’t any devils in it except us. 
We let in the light and the darkness disappeared. 
Then, when we got together and understood ev¬ 
erything, the devils disappeared too.” 

So Lige had a chance to teach his little lesson 
after all, and we wondered if he had planned it 
that way right along, or whether it just happened. 
Anyhow, it gave us quite an exciting adventure 
and something to talk about. 

The Burdon Corner boys left us near the camp 
because they had a long way to go and it was most 
dark by the time we reached Lige’s house. 


X 

Lige took us in by the back way to the kitchen 
and Nate and I brought wood from the yard, 
while Lige built a fire and started coffee. Then he 
took some yellow corn meal and poured boiling 
water over it and fried us the most delicious pan¬ 
cakes we ever ate. 

Lige didn’t give us any more lessons but let us 
eat our fill,—with plenty of maple syrup too — 
and laughed to see what wonderful appetites we 
had. When we could hold no more, he told us he 
had a lot of things he wanted to show us and in¬ 
vited us to go into the parlor. 

There was a sort of living room off the kitchen 
where Lige slept and where he usually enter¬ 
tained his company, when he had any, and this 
room was not much different from such rooms in 
any farmer’s house, but we had never seen the 
inside of the parlor. This was always closed and 
there were dark green shades on all the windows 
— so nobody, I guess, had ever had a chance to 
look into the room, either from the inside or the 
outside. We felt a little skittish about going into 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


this room, because it was the room where old 
Aunt Sarah Woods had been found dead. 

Lige led the way and lighted up the parlor 
lamp, so it didn’t seem quite so spooky, and we 
followed sort of holding our breaths, and pretty 
curious to know what was in there anyhow, but 
we were not prepared for the surprise we got. 

Gee! if the devil’s den was scary I don’t know 
what to say about this place. Lige was pretty 
careful though, and kept explaining, or I guess 
we would have been scared into fits. 

Well, he had the place all set out with every 
kind of horrible image you can imagine, such as 
we had never seen nor heard of before, and on the 
wall over the mantle was a yellow streamer with 
a picture of a big black dragon on it, and all about 
the room were smaller ones, besides a lot of flags 
of different nations. 

Lige told us how he had picked these things up 
in different parts of the world, and that most of 
the images were idols or gods that people wor¬ 
shiped. We thought most of them looked more 
like devils than gods and told Lige so. 

“That’s the funny thing about it,” Lige an- 

116 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


swered, “if you go back far enough gods and 
devils look pretty much alike. See this strange 
creature,” he said as he picked up something that 
looked, for all the world, like a scare crow. “This 
represents the image of God in the mind of the 
poor native of the South Sea Islands. Where did 
he get it? Is it any wonder his religion is one of 
fear?” 

, Then he showed us a big bronze god, sitting 
cross legged — a kind of fat faced, sleepy looking 
fellow with his eyes half closed and his hands 
hanging down in his lap. He said that was a 
Budda from India and it really meant a good 
deal, for Budda was a great teacher who taught 
us how to be calm and resigned inside, no matter 
what happened outside. We guessed that was 
where he got the teaching from about the inner 
chamber that he was telling us about in the after¬ 
noon. But after they made a god of him the 
people just worshiped his image, instead of try¬ 
ing to understand his message, and that was like 
a good many other religions, Lige guessed. 

Lige said, Budda was represented as overcom¬ 
ing all the temptations of the world, but Nate and 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


I thought that wouldn’t do much good if he just 
sat still, kind of sleepy like, and didn’t get up and 
hustle round to make things better. He might 
get to feeling all right inside by sitting quiet with 
his eyes closed, but it would be a good deal like 
an ostrich who buries her head in the sand to get 
away from danger. 

Lige showed us a lot of other things and told us 
more about the gods — more than I can ever set 
down — and it was all mixed in with little les¬ 
sons about life, that made us think. That was 
Lige’s way, and I guess Lige would have been a 
great teacher if he had had a fair chance. As 
near as we can make out Lige didn’t have any 
folks, and ran away to sea when he was quite 
young — because they abused him in the home 
where he was — so he didn’t have any education 
except what he picked up on his travels. 

But he said we all had images of God that we 
carried about with us and they were just as real 
as these that were made of wood and stone and 
things. 

“And some of them are just as queer, I’ll bet,” 
Nate exclaimed. 


118 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


That set us to thinking over again what Lige 
had told us in the afternoon about making the 
right kind of pictures in our inner chambers. 

Lige said, he guessed it was fear that made such 
frightful images come in people’s minds. They 
couldn’t believe in the one Good so they had to 
invent some explanation of why we have evil 
thoughts and deeds, and these images were the 
result. He thought that most folks took the good 
as a matter of course and didn’t think much about 
it because good didn’t need explaining. They 
forgot how much good there really was in the 
world because they spent so much time trying to 
explain evil . 

“I don’t see how you get around it either,” 
Nate said, “if God is all good.” 

“Well,” Lige answered, “it is hard, but re¬ 
member the lesson of the devil’s den — and re¬ 
member that every thought we hold tends to be¬ 
come real on some plane of life. When people 
understand that there will be no more wars.” 

“Then how about prophesy?” we asked, be¬ 
cause Mr. Hardiman had been preaching about 
it and had told us that all the wars that were ever 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


foretold by the prophets would have to come true 
to prove the word of God. 

“There are different ways of proving God’s 
word,” Lige mused. “If we understand his laws 
we won’t worry so much about what somebody 
says he said.” 

He had been taking things out from an old 
trunk. Finally he picked up an object which he 
began carefully to unroll from a beautiful silk 
handkerchief. It proved to be a sort of glass 
globe which he held up and polished off till it re¬ 
flected the light something wonderful like a soap 
bubble glistening in the sun. 

“This is what they tell fortunes with in India,” 
he said. “The fakers gaze into this crystal globe 
and pretend to read the future.” 

“Can they really do it?” I asked. “Can they 
really tell what is going to happen before hand?” 

“They can tell you lots of things that will come 
true if you choose to believe what they tell you,” 
Lige answered, “but that’s just like prophesy.” 

“And fortune tellers who prophesied evil in 
the old days were called Sorcerers weren’t they?” 
Nate asked. 


120 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


“Yes, and they were killed for it. Perhaps 
people understood more about the law in those 
days,” Lige answered, kind of grim and solemn. 

Just then we heard footsteps outside and Lige 
took us quickly out into the living room and 
closed the parlor. Then he left us and went to the 
kitchen where we heard someone fumbling at the 
back door. We heard him say “Who is it?” and 
it was Phil Shackford’s voice that answered back 
— wild and excited: 

“For God’s sake, Lige, do something for me or 
they’ll get me sure! Give me a drink, or some¬ 
thing, quick. Honest to God I haven’t had a 
drink — since the last time — last time I was 
here.” 

So Phil had been coming to Lige for his liquor. 
That was the first thing we thought, and it looked 
pretty bad for Lige. We couldn’t help thinking 
of some of the suspicions that had been going 
round the village, about why Lige went away so 
much into the mountains. He must have some 
place where he got liquor and sold it secretly to 
the men. 

Then we thought about what happened over at 


121 




LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


Jack Bowker’s wedding when they said he made 
wine out of water and that they all got full on it. 
Of course he couldn’t make wine from water — 
that was just a bluff. Lige must be supplying 
them from some secret place in the mountain 
where it was either made or smuggled in. 

And Phil was being chased perhaps by officers 
of the law, and maybe Phil was one of the gang, 
and they might be here after him any minute and 
we’d all be arrested together. 

My! But it’s funny how many things will 
run through one’s head in an instant. I guess 
Nate had been thinking about the same things 
too, because he looked scared as anything and 
said “Let’s beat it out the front way.” 

But just then Lige came in and walked over to 
us and his eyes were twinkling so, that somehow 
the fright all left us and he said almost in a whis¬ 
per—“Phil Shackford has been keeping the pledge 
all the week. We must show him how to get clear 
of the devil. You remember how I told you to 
pray for the Deacon.” Then he went back in the 
kitchen. 

So that was why Phil came to Lige, and it was 


122 

























































































. 

























































































“You always get what you wish for. 


What’ll you haver” 








LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


the devils who were chasing him — or so he 
thought. 

Well, we were prepared then, and when Lige 
brought Phil in, all kind of shaky, we stepped up 
to him smiling and held out our hands, like he 
was the president, and said “How do you do, Mr. 
Shackford? It’s a fine evening out.” 

Well I never saw anything like, the way it 
worked. There he was, all dressed up too in his 
meeting clothes and had had a shave and we had 
almost never seen him that way before, on Sun¬ 
day. He sat down quite calm and we asked for 
his family, and if Mrs. Shackford was over her 
rheumatism, and if the new baby had cut any 
teeth, and he seemed pleased as anything. 

Lige went out in the kitchen while we were 
talking and when he came in he brought some 
little cakes on a plate and he held a long dark 
bottle in his hand. Well that bottle kind of up¬ 
set us again but Lige’s laugh relieved us. 

“It’s a Hindo magic wishing bottle” he said. 
“You always get what you wish for. What’ll 
you have? I suppose you’ll take a little bitters” 
he said to Phil with a wink, “but I don’t think 


123 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 

you boys would like it. How would you like cof¬ 
fee — or say, raspberry shrub?” 

Of course we both wanted shrub, but just to 
make it interesting one of us said coffee. He set 
out the glasses and there right before our eyes he 
poured out of that bottle first shrub, then coffee 
and then Phil’s bitters. Then he poured out a 
full glass of clear water for himself. 

“There’s magic for you!” Phil said, as we 
tasted our glasses. “That’s better than the one 
Lige put over at Jack Bowker’s wedding. You 
remember, Lige, when you turned water into 
wine? Show the boys that one.” 

Phil was feeling pretty good now and was really 
getting quite gentlemanly to us. 

Well, Lige went out again and after a while 
brought in a pitcher and a lot of small glasses. 
First he filled up the glasses with water to show 
us there was nothing else in the pitcher. Then 
he poured it all back, and when he filled the 
glasses the second time it was all wine. Then 
he poured the wine back, and right out of the 
same pitcher, he poured first wine, then water, 
till all the glasses were filled. Finally he poured 


124 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


out nothing but water which he put back in the 
pitcher and emptied in the sink. 

“Didn’t pass any of it round I notice,” Phil 
chuckled. 

“No, that would spoil the trick” Lige laughed 
back. 

“But you did, over at the wedding didn’t you?” 
Phil asked, and he turned and winked slyly at us. 
“The minister asked Jack Bowker about it and 
Jack said you made several sap buckets full, and 
then they all got drunk on it.” 

“And didn’t Mr. Hardiman know Jack was 
stringing him?” Lige asked. This seemed to 
tickle Lige immensely and he laughed a long 
time. 

Well, that put Lige into fine feather. He 
opened the parlor door and brought out one thing 
after another, and told stories about them, and 
made jokes, and did the most wonderful tricks 
you ever saw, and some of the best ones he 
showed us how to do, just to prove to us how 
natural they were, and how any one could do 
them just as well as he and better, if they only 
cared to study and practice. 


125 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


Then he brought out some books on magic and 
showed us pictures and things to prove that ma¬ 
gicians did the same tricks thousands of years 
ago. He said if folks only knew about those 
things there wouldn’t be so many superstitions. 
It was the truth we needed — always the truth to 
set us free. And no matter how jolly Lige was, 
you could see all the time he was trying to im¬ 
press serious lessons. 

Then he brought out the crystal and told Phil’s 
fortune. That made him sit up and take notice 
you can bet. But Nate and I were looking at one 
another and smiling because we knew the secret, 
and of course we wouldn’t give it away for any¬ 
thing. We wanted to see if it would come true, 
and anyhow we knew Lige was working hard for 
Phil’s good. 

He gazed into the crystal as serious as any¬ 
thing and he said, he could see Phil, as a fine old 
man with silky white hair and beard sitting on 
the veranda of the old Squire Whiting place in a 
rocking chair and his wife was beside him look¬ 
ing so sweet and happy because one of the boys 
was coming home from college. Then he told 


126 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


how he could see Mazie (who is the baby) teach¬ 
ing the village school, and Dick being a business 
man in New. York and sending home a check ev¬ 
ery week. 

Well, if you can believe it, Phil sat there lis¬ 
tening to every word, and the tears were stream¬ 
ing down his face, and one could see how the 
charm was going to work just as Lige said it 
would. 

Anyhow we haven’t any doubt, after what we 
saw that night that a heap of good luck is com¬ 
ing to the Shackford family — and of course 
knowing all we do, it will make a lot of difference 
in the way we will act toward them. 

Nate and I have been talking it over since and 
we know we will have to treat them as if it was 
true already, because we can’t get that picture 
out of our minds about Phil and his wife sitting 
on the veranda. 

After that, Lige did some tricks with cards, 
and I don’t wonder some folks think the old nick 
is in them, but Lige showed us how they were 
done, and then explained how a pack of cards 
was, next to the Bible, one of the most wonderful 


127 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


things in the world, if used in the right way. He 
said it w^as just as important to learn to play as 
to learn to work, and if we didn’t learn to play 
fair, we never would amount to much. 

Just then Lige stopped suddenly and stared out 
the window, then he ran to the door and called 
“Jase, Jase, come on in.” Pretty soon he came 
back alone, and he said he saw two boys running 
off down the road and one of them he thought 
was Jase Perkins. 

“Well, if they looked in here I guess they’ll 
have something to tell,” Phil said as he rose and 
looked about the room. It was a sight for the 
Gods, as they say, for gods and dragons were 
scattered about among the trick things and curios 
from all over the world. And to make matters 
worse there were the cards on the table and the 
black bottle and the glasses. 

We had to laugh then, but we knew if it ever 
got around the village it would be no laughing 
matter and the more we tried to explain the worse 
it would be, so we agreed to say nothing and 
watch what happened. 

Phil said he guessed he’d better be getting home 


128 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


or the folks would worry. It seemed funny to 
hear Phil talk that way, but it showed how 
changed he was getting, already. Lige went out 
to the door with him. 

We waited back a little because we wanted to 
ask Lige one or two more questions. When he 
came in we were looking at a little gold locket 
which hung by a tiny chain on his bed post. 

“That is a very old keepsake” he said. “I’ve 
worn it all around the world.” 

“Is it your good luck charm?” I asked. 

He didn’t answer right away, but opened up the 
locket and there was a picture in it of the most 
lovely girl you ever saw. She was smiling and 
her teeth were like pearls. And she had wonder¬ 
ful blue eyes that looked right at you and made 
you feel somehow that she could read everything 
in your heart, down to the deepest secret, but 
then, all so jolly you wouldn’t mind because you 
would feel somehow that she understood. 

“Maybe it is someone he used to know when he 
was a boy” Nate suggested kind of bashful. 

“I never saw her, but I love her face, don’t 
you?” he said sentimental like. Then he added 


129 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


kind of twinkling — “I call her Saint Mary of 
Erin’s Isle.” 

“I guess she’s your patron saint, isn’t she?” 
Nate asked. Nate has a book of saints at home. 

“Or my matron saint” Lige answered as he put 
the locket back on the bed post and began to clear 
up the litter. 

“I shouldn’t think you would have to work in 
a blacksmith shop,” I suggested “when you could 
make heaps and heaps of money on the stage.” 
And Nate added “We can’t imagine why you’d 
settle in a sleepy little place like this after all the 
places you’ve been in.” 

Lige waited quite a long time before he spoke. 
“It was on account of a lost relative” he finally 
said, slowly. “I thought perhaps I might find 
him here.” 

Then he changed the subject, but it was such a 
strange answer he gave us, we would have liked 
to ask him a lot more questions. 


130 


XI 

All the way home we kept wondering what Lige 
could mean about coming here to look for a lost 
relative. Did he mean that he had a son or a 
brother or something, who had run away, and if 
so, who could it possibly be? We were thinking 
over all the different boys and men in the village, 
but every one seemed to belong to some body that 
we knew, and Lige didn’t seem to have any body 
belonging to him, or who was likely to — and for 
that matter, Lige didn’t belong to anybody that 
we knew, in the town or out of it. The lady in 
the picture was the only one Lige seemed to be 
connected with and we didn’t even know what she 
was to him. 

Nate had been quiet, quite a spell, as we 
walked toward the village. Suddenly he spoke 
up and said: 

“I have it.” 

“What?” I asked. 

“His matron saint! That’s his mother of 
course. Matron means mother, don’t it? The 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


Matron of an orphan asylum is just a sort of step 
mother to all the children.” 

“Maybe he was raised in an orphan asylum” 
I said — “Maybe she was the matron of the 
asylum.” 

“But he never saw her — the lady in the pic¬ 
ture — and he has worn the locket all around the 
world. What would that mean but a keepsake 
of his dead mother? She must be dead or he 
would be trying to find her — and he said the lost 
relative he was looking for was a him ” 

“Maybe he’s looking for his father. Don’t you 
remember his telling us down back of the black¬ 
smith shop one time how he knew his mother was 
a daughter of joy — because he had seen her pic¬ 
ture. Of course that is her picture!” 

“But he said his father was one of the solemn 
kind. I wonder who it could be. You know he 
said he had never seen his father—” 

“And had no picture of him except the one he 
carried ‘inside himself.’ What did that mean?” 
I asked. 

“Why don’t you see?” Nate answered. “That’s 
easy. He was trying to explain why he had such 


132 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


a solemn side to his nature when he knew his 
mother must be gay from her picture — and that 
was the picture — in the locket — which he wore 
all round the world since he ran away from the 
asylum.” 

“How do you know he ran away from an asy¬ 
lum?” I asked. 

“I don't know I guess — but I’ll bet he did. 
That would explain everything, and be just like 
Lige, and now he’s looking round for his lost rela¬ 
tive and who else could that be, but his father? 
It’s the only one he had to lose, because he had 
already lost his mother, and if it was a brother or 
an uncle or anything like that I guess we would 
have heard about it by now — but a father — 
that’s different. Maybe he didn’t know whether 
he had a father or not — that is, a real one, but 
of course he had some kind of a father besides 
God, who is everybody’s father in a way.” 

Well, that was the way we were going on, till 
first we knew we were down by Phil Shackford’s 
place, and we stopped sudden when we heard 
voices. It was pretty dark, but we could make 
out two figures and we heard Phil’s voice saying— 


i33 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


“No sir-ree! You needn’t worry about those 
boys. I was there myself and nothing went on 
but the most innercent amusement. Drinkin’ 
an’ gamblin’! Ha-ha—That’s a great joke. Just 
like the cowardly sneakin’ whelp! Too scared to 
come in even for a drink—because of that dragon 
picture on the wall, I’ll bet.” And Phil laughed 
long and hearty. 

“Well, it’s lucky I met you first” we heard the 
other voice say, and then I recognized dad. 

He seemed kind of put out and didn’t know 
whether to scold us or not. He had started to 
come up after us when he met Phil — who told 
him his side of the story. 

As we walked toward home he said that Jase 
Perkins had come along just as church was letting 
out and told what he saw through Lige’s window 
— that it was a drunken and disorderly crowd, 
gambling and carrying on something dreadful. 

Judging by Phil’s condition, which was better 
than he had ever seen it before on Sunday night, 
dad said he’d have to make some allowances. 
But he thought we’d have to walk pretty straight 
for a while to prove to the villagers that every 


i34 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


thing was all right, after what Jase had set going, 
and he thought we’d better not go up to Lige’s 
again on Sunday night. 

Ma wasn’t feeling very well, so she didn’t go 
to church, and dad said he’d hurry home before 
anyone got her upset — if they hadn’t already — 
and we’d better get along to Nate’s house and go 
to bed. I guess dad knew everything was all 
right or he wouldn’t have let me go on with Nate. 

Nate’s sister was on the poarch with her beau, 
so we sneaked in the back way and got into bed 
— but it was a long time before we got to sleep, 
there was so many things to talk over. 


i35 


XII 

It is nearly a week now since Lige Golden went 
away, and so many things have happened since I 
wrote anything in my diary I guess it will take me 
all winter to write it up; and it ought to be writ¬ 
ten because the more we think about it, Nate and 
I and some of the other boys, the more it seems 
like the most exciting story that was ever written. 

The village is all upset, and some think one 
thing and some another, but Nate and I know, 
and we think Lige will come back, or will let us 
hear from him again somehow, where-ever he is. 

But of course Jase Perkins and Bill Trainor 
and Joe Peneau all swear that they saw him or 
his ghost in the flames, and that either he was 
burned to death, or else, by some kind of black 
magic, he escaped. 

Then there’s that story of Deacon Withers’, 
that Lige appeared to him in a dream; and what 
is more curious the deacon stands up for him 
now and won’t allow anyone to say anything 
against him in his presence. 

And the deacon is getting to be real nice to us 

136 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


boys and smiles when he sees us, and we go right 
on smiling at the deacon and treating him just 
like Lige told us to do when he told us how to 
pray expecting the thing to really happen. Lige 
was right about praying anyhow and it looks as if 
our prayers for the deacon were being answered, 
just as he said they would. 

We haven’t heard a word from Mary Withers 
but if she isn’t all right why does the deacon keep 
on smiling and looking so peaceful and happy and 
different from what we ever saw him before? 

But I suppose I ought to go back and set down 
everything in the order in which it happened, the 
way it would be in a story and when I grow up 
perhaps I’ll be able to get it all printed in a book. 

Well, these are the facts as near as I can set 
them down. 

Deacon Withers had been having quite a lot of 
trouble with his daughter Mary Madeline. Mary 
is about seventeen or eighteen and since her 
mother died has kept house for her father. Mary 
is a jolly girl, and likes to go to parties — and I 
guess she had been running pretty wild and had 
given the deacon a good deal of trouble. When 


i37 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


the deacon would go off to prayermeeting Mary 
would pretend to be sick or something so as to go 
to bed early, and then, after he had gone, she 
would slip on her best clothes and skip off down 
to the tavern where they were holding dancing 
parties. 

Quite a lot of gay people came over from the 
Corners, and up from the Ville, and sometimes 
some city people would be there and Mary sort of 
got her head turned, as the deacon said, and he 
couldn’t do anything with her. 

I guess Mary was high strung the way they say 
her mother was in her early days. Anyhow she 
liked society and she didn’t like prayer meeting 
where she usually got prayed for, whether she 
went, or whether she didn’t. 

I don’t blame her much, for not liking to be 
prayed for; I don’t like it very well myself, that 
is, the way they do it. I think Lige’s way is the 
best, that is, if you want to get what you want; 
but if I had a grudge and wanted to get even with 
somebody and didn’t mind being kind of mean 
and underhanded I would drop a note into the 
contribution box asking for special prayers for 

138 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


that person, and I would write in his initials and 
I would describe him so everybody would guess 
who it was, knowing that Mr. Hardiman would 
read it right out, before the whole congregation; 
and perhaps the person himself would be sitting 
right there in sight of every body, with his face all 
red and his ears tingling and feeling like thirty 
cents. 

Gee! I know that feeling, and I’ll bet Mary 
Withers does. Besides, she has to hear the deacon 
pray every morning and every night and three 
times before meals not to mention Sundays and 
church nights. Well, I guess Mary got hardened 
in her heart, as the deacon said she was — last 
Friday night in the prayermeeting, where all the 
trouble started. 

Nate and I went to church that night, because 
they had been having a revival all the week and 
Nate’s girl, Mille Hoskins, was trying to get him 
interested. Nate was interested all right, but it 
was more so he could go home with her after¬ 
wards. He got me to go and sit with him but he 
made me promise not to tag after, when he started 
home with Millie. 


i39 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


We sat back near the door because we wanted 
to be handy to get out before the aftermeeting, 
when the members are asked to pass down the 
isles and ask sinners to come forward to the anx¬ 
ious seat. 

The minister preached that night about a Mary 
Mageline, or Madeline. It was a kind of wisha 
washy sermon and it didn’t interest us boys very 
much so we had been trying some of the tricks 
Lige taught us to do with a piece of string. 

But after the sermon, and after they had sung 
the Ninety and Nine, and Almost Perswaded, 
Deacon Withers got up and began to talk about 
his own Mary Madeline. He said she was going 
to the bad like the other one did in the sermon,— 
if she hadnt already gone, and he wanted every 
body to pray real hard that God would soften her 
hard heart and break her stubborn will, so she 
could return to her father’s house and ask for¬ 
giveness. 

That was the first time we had heard that she 
had been away, but it appears that she had been 
gone since the day before, when the Deacon had 
words with her and told her she would have to 


140 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


turn over a new leaf or not live under his roof. 

You could see the deacon was pretty well broke 
up and didn’t know what to do, and little by lit¬ 
tle it all came out what had happened. The dea¬ 
con said he mourned for her as one who was dead, 
but what he really thought was, that she had gone 
home from the dance with some of the folks over 
at the Corners and was staying away, just to spite 
him. You could see that he was determined in 
his mind not to go after her, and that was why 
he had kept it to himself all day. 

We made up our minds Mary was going to be 
just as stubborn as he, and we were wondering 
how it was going to come out, because we couldn’t 
see how prayers were going to be any use when 
nobody seemed to be expecting anything nice to 
happen. But we thought we’d watch and see be¬ 
cause we were interested in prayers, even if we 
wer’nt interested in religion, and we were inter¬ 
ested in Mary. 

Just then it was, that Moses Prouty sprung a 
sensation. He said he saw a girl, that looked for 
all the world, come to think of it, like Mary 
Withers talking with Lige Golden, Thursday 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 

night, and they were standing in Lige’s front 
yard in the moonlight when he was driving home 
from the Post Office. He said he looked back and 
saw them go into the house together and saw 
them lighting a candle. He didn’t think of Mary 
at the time, but now he felt sure it must have 
been her. 

Then Josh Bean got up and said Lige hadn’t 
been in the blacksmith shop all day but that he 
just saw him drive up through the village before 
church time with Bill Straiters sorrel mare and 
top buggy. He thought he had been down to the 
Ville and maybe he had shipped Mary away on 
the railroad. It looked kind of funny because 
Lige never used the top buggy for himself, but 
always used the democrat wagon when he went 
down to the train to get supplies for Bill. 

He said he hailed Lige and asked him if he was 
going courtin. Lige looked kind of sheepish and 
only said “No, — Bean,” and he winked kind of 
sly when he said it. 

Josh had been puzzled, most to death, ever 
since he came in, but now it looked clear as day¬ 
lights to him that Lige had kept Mary all night 


142 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


up at his house and then sent her off to, God 
knows where, and if this was so, he deserved to 
be lynched. 

Gee! That set the whole congregation into the 
most excited state I ever saw and someone shouted 
“He’s got a devil in him if any body ever had 
one” — and another said “Tar and feathers ain’t 
none too good for him.” 

Mr. Hardiman was on his feet trying to keep 
order, for two or three were trying to speak all 
at once. He finally got a chance, and said he was 
for law and order, and while he didn’t think 
enough had been said to prove anything against 
Mr. Golden, the fact that he had been seen with 
Mary Withers late last night, and that both had 
been away from the village all day, made it look 
pretty suspicious and something ought to be done 
about it. If the officers of the law wouldn’t do 
anything the citizens should take matters into 
their own hands. 

We knew that Mr. Hardiman hadn’t much 
faith in the officers of the law for Bill Straiter 
was the sheriff and wouldn’t be likely to go 
against Lige. Besides Bill was one of the rum 


i43 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


crowd and when there was a fight on in the vil¬ 
lage he was just as likely to be half full as any of 
the rest. 

You could see the deacon was pretty well 
worked up, for when he tried to speak, his voice 
kept breaking down and his hand trembled like 
he had the palsy. He said he didn’t think much 
of this Lige Golden. He was a queer character 
and cast strange spells over young folks. Nobody 
knew who he was, or who his folks were, and that 
was against him. Who knew but that he might 
be a jail-bird. 

He said, Lige had often stopped at the gate, on 
his way back and forth from work, and Mary was 
always telling some of the strange things he had 
said and done. 

Then he knew Mary had met him at the danc¬ 
ing parties, for though Lige didn’t dance, he liked 
to sit around and talk while watching the others. 

There was something the matter with Mary, 
that was clear, and somebody had got it to an¬ 
swer for. If it was Lige Golden no punishment 
could be too severe. He certainly believed horse¬ 
whipping would be too mild. He must be gotten 


144 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


rid of — out of the town and the sooner the bet¬ 
ter. 

There was a lot of whispering going on and you 
could see that some of the people who didn’t say 
anything were more excited than those who did. 
The meeting finally broke up somehow, and in¬ 
stead of an after meeting to save sinners the folks 
got together in little groups and were discussing 
what was going to be done to Lige. 

When we got out in the yard there were other 
groups and some of the folks who were not at 
church had joined in and were using pretty rough 
language, worse than anything we had heard in 
church. It was plain that there were some who 
thought Lige Golden was guilty of a pretty low 
down trick and that he had spirited off poor little 
Mary Withers to cover up his enequity. Any¬ 
how they didn’t propose to let him get away by 
waiting till morning and were going to get him 
that night. 

Bill Trainor started off to find a rope and, from 
the talk, we weren’t sure whether they were go¬ 
ing to hang him or ride him out of town on a rail, 


i45 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


but Nate and I only had one thought in mind, 
and that was to let Lige know his danger. 

We started off slowly at first, as if to go home, 
but as soon as we were out of sight we ran as fast 
as our legs would carry us. 

There was a light in Lige’s bedroom off the 
kitchen and we stopped a moment catching our 
breath as we glanced in at the window. There 
was something about what we saw, that I shall 
never forget. The candle flickered on the little 
lightstand by the window and near it sat Lige on 
the edge of his bed, gazing intently on something 
he held in his hands. 

It was the little picture we had seen that other 
night, when we were there with Phil Shackford 
and he showed us all his treasures. 

The candle light gave him a weird look, but 
there was also the bright moon shining straight 
in at the window, so that as he sat there in his 
gray shirt, open in the neck and rolled back show¬ 
ing his wonderful chest, he looked like a picture 
in some old book I had seen — or maybe it was 
on the stained glass window of the big church in 
Montpelier I saw when we were there on a visit. 


146 



“We stopped a moment catching our breath as we 
glanced in at the window” 





























. 









LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


I guess we forgot for a minute, what we came 
for, for we both stopped and stared. We didn’t 
even speak to Lige then or rap on the window but 
went quietly round to the back door and tapped 
softly, just as if there was nothing to get excited 
about in the whole world. 

We didn’t get an answer right away and we 
looked at each other, wondering if we should 
knock again. The quietness and hush of the 
place seemed to get hold of us and I guess, if we 
hadn’t realized it was a pretty serious errand, we 
would have skipped back to the road and run for 
home. 

Finally Nate knocked a little harder and then 
I knocked again and, Gee! it was such a relief to 
hear Lige’s voice, just as natural as anything, 
shout “come in.” 

We pushed the door open, just in time to see 
Lige put the picture to his lips and then lay it on 
the table as he turned and strode toward us. 

My! there was something there about Lige, so 
splendid and powerful, and so full of calmness 
and courage that it came over us all at once, how 
foolish our fears were. Lige was strong enough 


i47 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 

to face any five of the villagers. They couldn’t 
harm him, and it really seemed that, if they 
should try, all he would have to do would be to 
give them one look and they would either turn 
and run away or fall down and pray for mercy. 

We felt almost cheap, when we told him what 
we came for. We went through it as well as we 
could, all the time wondering what he would say 
or do. He didn’t seem a bit stirred up, or wor¬ 
ried or surprised. 

“But what do you boys think of me?” was his 
first question. He seemed to care more for that, 
than for any thought of harm that could come to 
him. 

“Oh, we were sure there must be some mistake. 
We knew you couldn’t harm Mary Withers, or 
anyone.” 

When we told him that, his face lighted up as 
if it was a great joy to know that we believed in 
him. “Flesh and blood hath not revealed this 
unto thee,” he said and then he turned and 
opened a book that lay on the table and read a 
passage which was something like this: “He that 
believeth on me, the things that I do he shall do, 


148 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


and greater things, after I have gone to my 
father.” 

“Well, boys,” he said, smiling, “I guess we 
don’t want to fight anybody tonight. Lets go up 
into the hills and enjoy the moonlight. Give to 
every man that asketh, and resist not evil.” 

We thought he was talking kind of rambling- 
like but all the while he was getting into his 
clothes, and finally he took a blanket off the bed 
and threw it over his shoulder, blew out the can¬ 
dle, put it in his pocket and led the way out the 
back door, up over the rocks in the rear of the 
house and onto the trail through the woods, lead¬ 
ing toward our camp on the hill. 

The trail runs less than a quarter of a mile 
through the thick woods, then it comes out in the 
pasture which is dotted here and there with small 
spruce. 

After a short climb Lige found an open space 
on the hillside where we could see all that went 
on in the valley without being seen by the people 
below. Here he spread out the blanket and laid 
down flat on his back and began to talk about the 
stars. 


149 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


“Here’s the chance we’ve been looking for, 
boys,” he said, just as naturally as if it was a 
bright Sunday afternoon. “Now we can listen 
to the music of the spheres — and why not?” he 
asked. “We don’t have to spoil a perfectly good 
night because someone else wants to fight,” and 
he laughed softly and made room for us to lie 
down beside him on the blanket. 

It seemed so queer, and yet such a natural 
thing to do that we laid down beside him, and all 
the time we were thinking that the folks, if they 
only knew, would swear Lige, and maybe all three 
of us were crazy. 

But the earth felt so good to our backs, through 
the blanket, and the sounds of the night — the 
crickets and the bull frogs down in the swamp — 
all sounded so natural — and the sky overhead 
was so glorious, that we heaved a sigh of real 
pleasure and repeated Lige’s question, “Why 
shouldn’t we?” 


XIII 

As I said before, the moon , was shining and 
it was quite light — except now and then when 
a cloud was floating by — and the air was clear 
and crisp and just cold enough to make our blood 
tingle without being chilly. We could see the 
lights in the village and get a glimpse here and 
there of the road winding up through the woods 
toward Lige Golden’s house. We could hear the 
roar of the brook in the valley, reminding us of 
the many happy hours we had spent fishing its 
beautiful deep pools and its glistening rapids. 

Lige didn’t say anything for quite a spell, and 
it seemed queer that anything could be so beau¬ 
tiful and so peaceful after what we had been 
hearing at the church. And here was Lige, the 
one who was being threatened with death and 
with tar and feathers as well, the one who was 
being accused by the villagers of all sorts of hor¬ 
rid crimes, lying between us two boys gazing 
calmly up at the stars. Down there in the valley 
we could hear angry voices and up here was what 
looked, for all the world, like peace and happi- 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


ness. It seemed as though either one or the 
other must be unreal like a dream, and I actually 
found myself rubbing my eyes like one trying to 
wake out of a sleep. 

Then again it looked so queer — and I wasn’t 
sure but it was a little bit cowardly—that a great 
strong man like Lige Golden should seem to be 
running away and not staying to fight it out. It 
wasn’t like most of the men I knew, because quite 
often the mill hands would get drunk on Saturday 
nights and someone would start a row and per¬ 
haps one who prided himself on being a good 
fighter would get out in the road and dare the 
crowd to lay hands on him. We boys would 
gather round and it would be pretty exciting for 
a time, but it usually ended mostly in words. 

And here was Lige Golden, by all odds the 
strongest man in town, not even getting excited 
over all the threats against him. 

I guess Nate was thinking the same things for 
he finally said kind of under his breath, “I bet 
Lige could lick the whole bunch if he wanted to.” 

At this Lige laughed right out, and said “But 
why should I want to?” 


152 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


“Well, I’d want to, I guess,” Nate answered, 
“if they’d lied about me that way.” 

“But they haven’t lied. They think they are 
right. I couldn’t make them think differently if 
I knocked their heads off, could I? Let them 
have their heads a little longer. That’s the only 
way.” Then he added just as matter of fact as 
anything, “I knocked a man’s head off one time. 
Would you like to hear about it?” 

Well, that remark pretty near upset us, it was 
so unexpected and we thought of what Deacon 
Withers had said back at the meeting house — 
that perhaps Lige was a jail bird. It came over 
us all at once that perhaps the deacon was right 
after all, and that we were trusting ourselves all 
alone on the mountain side in the night with a 
murderer. We were too surprised to speak and I 
guess we moved away a bit without knowing it 
and Nate sat up and looked as uneasy as any¬ 
thing. 

Lige didn’t appear to notice but went on, “It 
was in the South Sea Islands and he was a cana- 
bal. Of course I had to do it to save my life, but 
I can’t say I like to think about it even now. 


i53 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


Why would I want to injure one of our towns¬ 
people just on account of a misunderstanding 
which will all clear up in time? And it would be 
so unnecessary. I couldn’t beat up the worst 
man in town but what there would be some one 
who loved him, and would be sorry for him, and 
have to suffer on account of it. 

“Yes, I know I’m strong enough — but that 
makes me all the more careful. I wouldn’t want 
to take any chances tonight. Don’t you see how 
much better it is to come up here and enjoy the 
moonlight, while they have a chance to cool down 
a bit? 

“As for the Deacon, I can fix him up in the 
morning, in about five minutes — and I’m not 
sure I’ll wait even till morning. And the deacon 
is about the only one to consider after all. Poor 
old man. How I pity him. Are you still pray¬ 
ing for him, boys? Well, keep right on, and to¬ 
night perhaps you’d better include me in your 
prayers, for maybe before morning I’ll need a 
different sort of courage from the kind it took to 
knock off that canabal’s head.” 

This set us to wondering again, but we were 


i54 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 

soon roused by the noises which came from 
around Lige’s house. We sat up now and lis¬ 
tened. There was quite a crowd I guess by the 
sound, and we heard Lige’s name called again 
and again. Then we heard a banging on the door 
and after a while we heard a smashing of glass 
as though a rock had been fired through the win¬ 
dow. 

They were stumping Lige to come out, but I 
guess they were afraid to go in. 

We heard another window smash and a lot of 
pounding, but after a while they gave it up and 
started back toward the village. We saw groups 
of three or four along the road but couldn’t make 
out just who they all were, but some of the voices 
we thought we knew. Anyhow it quieted down 
after a while and we were wondering if it would 
be safe to go down and look at the damage. 

Lige’s house is up pretty close under the bank 
so we couldn’t see very much of the house, but 
we could see the clear space in front of the porch 
which makes the door yard. 

Just as we rose to our feet, we saw something 
that made us stop suddenly. Three figures ran 


i55 


LIGE GOLDEN—THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


out from the porch and stood looking back as if 
waiting for others. 

“Well I guess they’re not quite through yet, 
let’s sit down and wait a bit,” Lige said. 

We began to talk again and Lige told us a lot 
about the stars and how many billions of stars 
there were, and how each star was a sun and had 
worlds like ours revolving about it like our sun 
had the plannets, and how far was the nearest 
star, and that some of the stars are so far away 
that the light wouldn’t reach us for thousands of 
years, although they were made long before the 
days of Adam and Eve. And even we, right now, 
were living among the stars. 

That’s the kind of talk that makes one forget 
his troubles, or makes them seem pretty small, 
and I guess that is why Lige doesn’t get excited 
like folks who don’t dwell on such things, same 
as he does, and anyhow, he made us forget again 
all about what was going on down below. 

Mr. Hardiman often talks about keeping one’s 
mind on higher things but it’s hard to keep one’s 
mind on the things he talks about, while the 
things Lige talks about makes one forget everv- 

156 


L1GE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


thing else; and so we forgot again till something 
happened that brought us back to earth with a 
start. 

A cloud had just passed over the moon and it 
seemed quite dark for a spell, and then suddenly 
the sky lit up with a different sort of light from 
anything which we had noticed before. 

Nate and I were thinking of Northern Lights 
and the aurora borealis I guess, but the next thing 
we knew Lige was on his feet, and for a minute 
we thought he was crazy. 

But it didn’t take long to find out what was the 
matter. Flames and sparks were coming up from 
the front of Elijah’s house and the door yard was 
as light as day and you could see three figures 
running back and forth bringing dry branches and 
things from an old brush heap near by, and piling 
them up around the porch, which was all ablaze. 

I never saw Lige so mad before and he said 
things that wouldn’t be fit to print. I guess all 
the words he ever used fighting canabals came 
back to him, and for a minute or two we had 
visions of heads being knocked all over that door 
yard. He started down the hill on a run, his fists 


157 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


doubled up and his eyes glaring like coals of fire. 

We were too frightened to speak or run after 
him, and then, all at once, the most remarkable 
thing happened. He stopped suddenly on a little 
knoll just before reaching the woods and seemed 
to change into a different person. The moon 
came out and lighted up the place where he stood, 
light as day, and the flames beyond made a sort 
of halo about him and he seemed to loom up like 
some giant in a fairy tale. He stood there like 
one in a trance and was actually looking up at the 
stars. 

Then it came over us that instead of a terrible 
giant he was more like one of the pictures in the 
old family Bible. Nate and I talked it all over 
afterwards and Nate said the only thing he 
could think of was the day of judgment. I guess 
we would have been on our knees in a minute 
saying our prayers, if just then Lige hadn’t called 
back in that old familiar voice of his’n, 

“Stay where you are. Don’t come. It’s all 
right. Wait till I get back — but you’d better 
pray for me though, because I guess I need it as 
much as any of them.” Then he laughed and 

158 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


added “Watch and pray. Watch and pray.' I’ll 
be back in a jiffy.” 

He passed over the knoll and seemed to settle 
into the earth, but we knew of course that he was 
just going down on the other side into the woods. 

Well, we watched all right, and I guess we were 
praying pretty hard but we didn’t close our eyes 
or make any sound, either of us, and we were 
sure, more than ever now, that it was all true, 
what Lige had taught us, that the most earnest 
prayers are those one doesn’t shout from the 
house tops, or the hill tops. 

I suppose we must have sat there five or ten 
minutes shivering, although we were not cold, 
but it seemed longer. Everything was pretty 
dry and the old house seemed to be going up like 
tinder. We were wondering what Lige would do; 
— whether he would go after the men or just try 
to put out the fire and save some of his treasures; 
but it didn’t look as if he would have much 
chance to save them, for as near as we could judge 
the house would be one sheet of flames by the 
time he got there. 

We could see the men standing back now as if 


i59 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


it was getting too hot for them to go near. Sud¬ 
denly we heard the most blood curdling yell 
which seemed to come from all three at once, and 
they were standing still and pointing towards the 
flames as if they had seen some horrible sight. 

Then they turned and ran as if frightened out 
of their wits. We expected to see Lige’s form 
come out and follow them but no Lige appeared. 

What had happened to Lige? Had the roof fal¬ 
len in and buried him? We could not tell and 
we couldn’t seem to move for the horror that 
came over us. 

Every now and then we would catch glimpses 
of the three men running down the road toward 
the village,—running like mad,—but we couldn’t 
see that Lige or any one was following them. 
We could tell pretty well who they were too, but 
we didn’t care very much just then. Our thoughts 
were for Lige. 

Well, we finally got our wits together, enough 
to think we’d better go down and find Lige — or 
what was left of him, but somehow our courage 
or something was all out of us. We got up, kind 
of limp like, and started down the path a little 


160 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


ways, wondering how far we’d get and whether 
we’d dare enter the dark woods when we got 
there. 

But just then out came the form of Lige look¬ 
ing pale and ghost-like against the black bank of 
trees. Before I thought, I said, “Who is it?” and 
I almost whispered it, but Lige answered “It is I. 
Be not afraid.” And Lige was smiling. Think 
of it! 

“It’s all up in smoke,” he said, “but I got what 
I went after” and he took something from his 
pocket which glistened in the moonlight. He held 
it up and examined it carefully, as if to see if it 
had been injured. “It’s all right,” he said, and 
then the look came into his face we had seen 
earlier in the evening through the window. We 
thought once there were tears in his eyes, as he 
stood there looking at the picture, but perhaps it 
was only that old twinkle we had seen so often. 

“My matron saint,” he said slowly, as if in a 
dream. 


161 


XIV 

That was everything he had saved — the pic¬ 
ture, and really it seemed as if it was all he cared 
for. 

We went back to the blanket and sat down and 
then it was that Lige began to talk to us boys in a 
way we shall never forget. It wasn’t so much 
different from what he had talked before but more 
earnest and more solemn. 

Only once he laughed and that was when we 
told him about the yells of the men and how they 
ran. He laughed then and said there’d be a new 
ghost story for Jase Perkins to feed on, that 
would last him quite a spell. But then he didn’t 
laugh harshly and acted more as if he pitied the 
men than anything else. 

“Perhaps I made a mistake. Perhaps I should 
have done it differently,” he mused, “and saved 
them all this trouble; but there you are! How 
can you help making mistakes? Life is all full 
of mistakes. We’ll always be making mistakes. 
Life itself may be a mistake, but if it is, it is one 
big divine mistake, and the one divine thing in us 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 

tells us not to mind, but to learn from our mis¬ 
takes to go on, and on, and on.” 

He was sitting a little above us on a rock and 
as we looked up into his face while he was saying 
some of these things, it felt as if we were in the 
presence of some strange, almost divine person 
from another world who was teaching us lessons 
which we wouldn’t fully understand perhaps in 
a whole life time. 

And yet he was so simple and so natural. 

“And I must go on,” he said. “I guess my use¬ 
fulness in this town is about over. But you boys 
— you boys — you have a great'life ahead. You 
will never forget the things I have told you, but 
they will mean more and more as you go on, be¬ 
cause they are the truths one only learns from 
deep experience. I know they are truth, and 
they are life, and you will know it. 

“And remember it is the truth that makes us 
free. Not the truth from books alone, but the 
truth that grows from within and interprets all 
we see without, in terms of the One Purpose . 
Remember it is not two, but One. It cannot be 
two. We cannot think of it that way and be hap- 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 

py. It is one — One!” It seemed to mean so 
much to him that he kept repeating it over and 
over. 

Again he was looking off at the stars and we 
remembered what he had told us about their 


“And when you know deep down in your hearts 
there is only One Purpose in it all, you will know 
that you are just as much a part as any, and that 
I am a part, and Jase Perkins and Josh Bean and 
Joe Peneau — yes, they are all parts of the one 
purpose, and that Purpose is good. Then you 
will know how to love your enemies, for that is 
the only way it can ever be done.” 

“That is why we can pray for those who spite¬ 
fully use us,” I suggested, for it came to me all at 
once what that golden text meant I learned to say 
in Sunday School so long ago but didn’t under¬ 
stand a bit till now. “Even Deacon Withers?” 

“Yes!” Lige almost shouted, “I believe it!” 
and he brought his hand down on his knee so loud 
we were startled. Then he lowered his voice and 
went on as if speaking more to himself. “One 
Purpose — one Eternal Purpose — I am a part 

164 



LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 

and you are a part and Deacon Withers is a part. 
Three in one. Many in one. All in one.” 

Then he took out the little locket and opened it 
and gazed a long time at the face of the beautiful 
young woman, his “matron saint,” and he kept 
saying softly, “Three in One, Three in One. The 
Eternal Mystery. To know that I am in thee and 
thou in me, and all are one. And this — this is 
life, — everlasting. That ye might know that I 
am in the father and that the father is in me. 
The eternal father — the eternal mother — the 
eternal son. Three in one — all in one.” 

I don’t know if I’ve set this all down just as 
he said it, because it seemed sort of jumbled up at 
the time and does now, and I’ve wondered a good 
deal ever since, but I thought I’d best try to set 
it down because if Lige wasn't crazy, or kind of 
out of his head, I knew it must mean something 
pretty deep; and perhaps the meaning would 
come to me after a while, — and anyhow it will 
help me to make up my mind whether he was all 
right, or queer in the head sometimes, like people 
said he was. 

Then all of a sudden he seemed to come back to 


LIGE GOLDEN—THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


himself. “Don’t you see how I couldn’t really 
want to hurt those fellows even if they did burn 
my house down? Besides you boys up there were 
praying for me, and of course that meant that you 
were expecting something. Were you expecting 
good or expecting evil?” he asked, with a queer 
look. 

I guess we didn’t know what to say because we 
had been thinking and expecting that Lige would 
knock their heads off, and that it would be good 
enough for them. 

But Lige read our thoughts just as easy as 
anything, as he always did. I don’t believe one 
could ever keep any thing from Lige because he 
seemed to look right down into our hearts and to 
know everything that was there. Nate and I 
have often wondered how he could do it, if he 
hadn’t some kind of gift, different from Mr. 
Hardiman and the others. Maybe it was because 
he believed we were all alike deep down, and I 
don’t think the others did. I guess they thought 
they were good and we were bad, but that was 
their mistake, according to Lige’s way of think¬ 
ing. 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


“Well,” Lige went on, “of course it was natu¬ 
ral, and I couldn’t blame you. But it was my 
thought of you boys back there that saved me, 
and I knew that deep down in your hearts you 
would pray right. 

“Anger always means murder — and for a mo¬ 
ment I had murder in my heart. It comes from 
the animals I suppose because there was a time 
when actual killing was the only way of getting 
satisfaction. Anger like that, when it doesn’t 
have any way to let itself out, turns back on the 
one who is angry.” 

“And then what?” I asked. 

“It murders just the same,” he said thought¬ 
fully. 

“But you didn’t die, did you?” 

“Didn’t I?” Lige answered. “Just think what 
died, or would have died if I hadn’t found a way 
out and had gone on and on — that way. Sup¬ 
pose I hadn’t knocked their heads off, but had 
just kept right on feeling as if I wanted to? Don’t 
you see what I would have lost, and you would 
have lost? The Lige Golden you knew would 
have been dead. Yes, murdered just as much as 


167 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


if you saw the blood streaming from his heart. 

“And what would I have lost? All that to me 
is worth while — my peace, my happiness, my 
faith in the one purpose? Isn’t that worth while? 
To find a way out like that?” 

“And was that why you stopped so suddenly 
and seemed to grow so big?” I asked. 

“Did I seem to grow big?” This amused him, 
and I wondered if he had felt what we seemed to 
see. 

“You seemed like a giant,” we told him. 

“I wonder, I wonder!” and he was lost in 
thought. 

We sat still quite a while after this and then 
Nate asked “Where are you going to sleep to¬ 
night?” for it came over us all at once it was 
getting awful late. The moon was settling down 
in the west and we were wondering what the folks 
would be thinking of at home. We didn’t think 
it would be safe for Lige to go with us back to the 
village; and besides we didn’t want the folks to 
know how we had warned Lige. We weren’t 
ashamed exactly, but I guess we were a little bit 
afraid. 


168 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


“How about the camp?” Lige asked. 

That was just the thing, we all agreed, and we 
could bring Lige up some food in the morning, 
for everything of Lige’s except what few clothes 
he had on was burned. 

He told us he thought he’d better go away for a 
spell till matters settled down, but that we needn’t 
worry about him. He would always find a place 
to lay his head. 

“There is room enough in the world for all of 
us and we don’t have to crowd one another.” 
Then he looked toward the west and exclaimed, 
“Say boys it’s going to be fine tomorrow! Let us 
go hence.” And he picked up the blanket. 

But instead of going up to the hut he walked 
along with us toward home, and we talked as we 
went along. We didn’t go down to the road but 
went round through the fields and down through 
the hollow back of Deacon Withers’ where we 
crossed the brook. 

The Deacon’s lot runs down to the brook back 
of the house. There is a lane leading up from the 
brook to the house through the orchard and gar¬ 
den, and this makes a short cut to the street, and 

169 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


our house is across from the Deacon’s only a little 
further down toward the Postoffice. Nate lives 
just a little way beyond, so we planned to go up 
this lane. The lights were all out at the deacon’s, 
and for that matter most everywhere else as far 
as we could see. 

We stopped at the foot of the lane, because we 
didn’t think Lige would want to come any far¬ 
ther. We had been walking along pretty quiet as 
we got near the village and Lige seemed more and 
more thoughtful. 

He was looking up at the deacon’s. We said 
goodnight and left him standing there gazing, but 
he called us back softly. He seemed to want to 
say something more but acted as if he didn’t 
know just how to say it. 

“Boys” he said finally, “I shall always be with 
you. You will not forget — neither will I. Re¬ 
member whatever you hear of me, I am the same 
Lige; and I’ll always need you, and you will need 
me. 

“And, as for the deacon,” he hesitated, “re¬ 
member— he is one of us.” 

He smiled, and waved, as we passed up among 


170 


LIGE GOLDEN—THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


the trees and the last we saw of him he was stand¬ 
ing there at the foot of the lane smiling, but his 
eyes were on the window where he knew the dea¬ 
con would be sleeping — that is, if he was asleep 
— and in his hand he held the locket which he 
had rescued from the flames, and which was now 
the last of all his earthly treasures. 


XV 

We almost tiptoed up the lane and past the 
deacon’s. The street was deserted and so quiet 
we felt like thieves in the night. I guess neither 
of us had ever been out so late before. We were 
lucky and not even a dog barked. We didn’t talk 
much but I guess we were pretty busy thinking. 

Nate left me at the gate and started off on a 
run toward home. I took off my shoes and man¬ 
aged to get up to bed without waking any body. 
I guess the folks must have thought I was in bed 
when they got home or else they were so excited 
with what had happened that they forgot about 
me. Anyhow I felt pretty lucky when I found 
myself safely in bed. 

I didn’t go to sleep for a long time, there were 
so many things that kept coming up in my mind 
after all the excitement we had been through, and 
every time I dropped off a bit I would wake up 
with a sudden start and then some question 
would come up that I hadn’t thought of before. 

It’s funny how many things come up that way 
when one is all alone in the dark, and how pic- 


172 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 

tures keep going round and round inside your 
head like the pan-o-rammer of Pilgrim’s Progress 
that came to this place once and gave an exhibi¬ 
tion in the town hall. 

Lige told us a lot about those pictures once — 
the kind that come inside your skull — and said 
how those pictures were like seeds planted in the 
garden of the mind. He said it was wrong to 
punish a child by sending him to bed, because if 
a child went to bed angry he would have angry 
thoughts, and bad pictures would come up in his 
mind, and then he would have bad dreams. Then 
if he had bad dreams, after a while his dreams 
might come true. 

So we must always go to bed with happy 
thoughts and only let such pictures come up as 
we want to have come true. Then we would al¬ 
ways love to lie in bed even if we didn’t go to 
sleep because it was the one time when we could 
make the world just as beautiful as we liked. 

But in spite of all he had told us about lying 
calm and peaceful and making beautiful pictures 
in our minds which were to come true later in 


i73 


LIGE GOLDEN—THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


life, I couldn’t keep out a good many trouble¬ 
some thoughts. 

After all, what did we know about Lige Gold¬ 
en ? And again where was Mary Withers ? That 
question had not been answered and it kept com¬ 
ing up to me that Lige hadn’t said a word about 
Mary but had talked about every thing else under 
the sun — or stars — and maybe he had done it 
on purpose to keep us from asking about her. 

Then, if Mary was in any kind of trouble, was 
it Lige’s fault or somebody else he was shielding? 

Lige was a funny character and most of the 
church people were down on him and perhaps 
they had reasons that we boys didn’t know about. 

Then there was that picture of the other Mary 
that he called his matron saint which he seemed 
to care so much about. Perhaps that was Lige’s 
girl or his wife who had died or run away or 
something and maybe he wanted Mary Withers, 
because she was like the other Mary. And then 
it came over me that they did look a good deal 
alike — especially when Mary laughed and was 

g a y- 

Why hadn’t we asked more about the lady in 


i74 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


the picture? And would Lige have told us if we 
had? Lige always had such a way of telling us 
just enough to make us curious, and then leading 
us off on some other subject so we forgot to ask 
what was on our minds. 

Well, I finally dropped off to sleep; and then I 
dreamed that Lige was a sort of Blue Beard and 
there was a trap door in his kitchen leading down 
into the cellar, and we were listening and we 
thought we heard Mary Withers crying down 
there and we were just lifting up the door when 
Lige came in looking angry. 

We dropped the door with a bang which woke 
me up. It was only the window blind which 
slammed to, in the wind. 

I got up to fix it and then I noticed there was a 
light in deacon Withers’ house which hadn’t been 
there before, because we had noticed that Lige 
had been looking up at that window when we left 
him, and the house had been all dark. 

I watched quite a while and once I got a shad¬ 
ow on the curtain but I couldn’t be sure whether 
it was the deacon or not. Somehow it made me 
think of Lige and what he had said earlier in the 


i75 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


evening, that he could fix the deacon in five min¬ 
utes and perhaps he wouldn’t wait till morning. 
But I waited and waited, what seemed a long 
time — and the light still burned. What could it 
mean ? 

The deacon was alone since Mary went. May¬ 
be he was sick, and I kind of pitied him and won¬ 
dered if someone ought not to be told. Could it 
be that Lige had gone in and wakened him that 
time in the night and if so what would he be doing 
to him? 

Finally I heard the clock strike three and I got 
back into bed shivering and pulled the bedclothes 
over my head. I guess I was scared of my 
thoughts. 

Then I tried again to think up some good 
thoughts to go to sleep on, and I thought of what 
Lige told us about the one purpose and the three 
in one, and the many in one, and how we must 
always remember that the deacon was one of us. 
That thought seemed to sooth me somehow al¬ 
though I couldn’t exactly understand what it 
meant, and before I knew it I was dreaming 
again. 


176 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


This time I seemed to be in a school room, and 
the school was in Lige’s house, in the room where 
all the idols and things were, and the old god 
Budda sat on the washstand teaching us. 

Nate was there and quite a number of the boys 
and girls we knew. Old Phil Shackford was sit¬ 
ting on a keg and swaying back and forth, like we 
had seen him many a night down at the store, and 
Jase Perkins was off in one corner looking white 
and scared like he wanted to jump out the win¬ 
dow. 

I looked round for Mary Withers and finally I 
saw her sitting with her head on her desk and she 
was sobbing as if her heart would break. 

And the old Budda god was swaying back and 
forth something like Phil Shackford. Pretty soon 
we were all doing it. Then the Budda began to 
make a droning noise and we tried to imitate him. 

Every once in a while, one of the other gods 
would come up and push Budda and say, “not 
that way but this way.” Then we would sway 
from side to side. 

Then the funny little south sea island god 
hopped up and down on the table and said “this 


177 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 




way” and we all got up and began to dance, all 
but Mary, who kept sobbing in her seat. 

Pretty soon all the gods were doing it, some one 
way and some another and all shouting to us to 
do as they did. 

Well, we were hopping and dancing and sway¬ 
ing and droning out the most unearthly sounds, 
and all the time it kept getting hotter and hotter 
and we couldn’t stop but had to keep it up, or 
some of the gods would get angry and dart fire at 
us, out of their eyes and nostrils. 

There was an old Chinese dragon god got after 
Jase Perkins and he was running about the room 
like mad. They tipped over the lamp and a big 
smoke began to rise up from the floor and then 
flames and then everybody shouted “fire” and 
“door.” But somehow we couldn’t seem to find 
any door out, and all the windows had iron bars 
across them, and every time we thought we had 
found a way out, we would be going into the fire¬ 
place or some dark room, where the darkness 
and the smoke would drive us back. 

Well, I tried to cry out and I couldn’t. Then 


178 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 

I remembered thinking perhaps it was all a dream 
and I must try to wake up. 

But just then there was a breath of fresh air 
from some place, and a voice which was welcome, 
I can tell you. It was Lige’s voice and it said 
“Follow me.” 

Pretty soon we were out of the burning house 
and as we ran up the trail, we could hear the 
crackling flames behind us and we knew we were 
safe, but when we looked back we could see, in 
the flames, first one god and then another rise up 
and fall back to rise no more. 

There were quite a number of us, and we ran 
up the trail through the woods and into the pas¬ 
ture beyond, where we had been sitting the eve¬ 
ning before. 

Phil Shackford, with beads of sweat on his 
forehead, and puffing like a steam engine, wanted 
to sit down and rest, but Lige had gone on ahead 
and kept beckoning us in the moonlight. We 
struggled on to keep him in sight. 

Jase Perkins, I remember, was one of the first 
to stop and then run off toward home as fast as 
his legs would carry him. I guess Phil Shack- 


179 


LIGE GOLDEN—THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


ford must have stopped somewhere to rest for we 
lost sight of him. Anyhow, after a while there 
was only Nate and I and we were panting up the 
mountain side with Lige always quite a distance 
in the lead. Every little while we would lose 
sight of him and call out, and always his voice 
kept coming back “Follow me.” 

He went on and on and on. And then, as we 
began to get near the top of the mountain, he be¬ 
gan to get dimmer. Larger and dimmer. He 
finally seemed more like a great cloud sweeping 
off up into the sky but always, beckoning, beck¬ 
oning. 

Well, when we reached the summit the cloud 
had passed away altogether and with it Lige, and 
there we were alone, looking up at the stars. We 
called “Lige! Lige!” but no answer came from 
anywhere. 

Then we looked back and there was Mary 
Withers looking more like an angel than a real 
person and her face was like the face in the pic¬ 
ture, only more beautiful. And that was all I 
remember of the dream. 

I woke up with a start and the bright sun was 

180 


LIGE GOLDEN—THE MAN WHO TWTNKLED 


shining in at the window and I knew it must be 
well along in the forenoon. 

Mother had been in and opened the window 
and taken off some of the bedclothes, and I guess 
that was when I dreamed Lige led us out into the 
air. 


XVI 

Lucky it was Saturday and no school. The 
first thing I thought of was Elijah and how we 
had promised to bring him up some food the first 
thing in the morning. Now it was after ten 
o’clock. Would he wait for us at the camp or 
come down to the village? 

I ate my breakfast as quickly as possible and 
managed to hook a few things for Lige, then I 
went down and called for Nate. He had left 
home half an hour before and gone down toward 
the sawmill. I wondered why he hadn’t come up 
for me, but pretty soon I met him. 

He had been over to the blacksmith shop and 
Lige was not there, but Bill Straiter showed Nate 
a note he found under his door from Lige, say¬ 
ing he thought it better not to come back for a 
few days. That meant he might be up at the 
camp waiting for us. So we started for the camp. 

We were wondering if it would be safe to cut 
through the deacon’s lot when, who should we 
meet, but the deacon himself. We remembered 
to smile and he smiled back and then I noticed, 


182 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


for the first time, what nice white teeth he had, 
different from most of the old men we knew in 
the village, whose teeth, when they had any, were 
stained with tobacco juice. It came to me then 
that the deacon must have been fine looking once 
and was pretty well preserved, for his years, due 
to his strict habits of life. 

We hesitated a little and the deacon read our 
thoughts and said, “All right boys—only be care¬ 
ful to put up the bars.” 

As we ran down the lane Nate was chuckling 
“Another miracle! Gee, it’s working almost be¬ 
fore we’ve had time to get it started.” He meant 
about the praying stunt Lige had told us how to 
do Sunday. 

Well, when we got up to the camp there was the 
blanket where he lay, and on it was pinned a lit¬ 
tle birch bark note. It said: 

“I hope , boys , to see you again , perhaps in 
a jew days , but if I don’t come back do not 
worry. There is room enough and I’ll al¬ 
ways be somewhere in the world — waiting 
for you. 

Lige.” 


183 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


That was all. Nothing to tell us where he had 
gone, or who he really was, or anything, and it 
seemed as if a great big something had gone out 
of our lives. 

Then I thought of my dream and told Nate — 
and now, we stood here by the camp, gazing up at 
the mountain which reminds me sometimes of 
the face of Elijah, and the same feeling came over 
me as I felt in the dream when we were left alone 
looking up at the stars. 

We wandered slowly down the trail toward 
Lige’s place or what was left of it, but we didn’t 
talk much. I guess we were thinking the same 
things, and we went along silently, as if we had 
agreed before hand what we would do. 

When we finally came out of the woods we saw 
that the fire had burned everything to the ground. 
It had rained a little sometime in the night, which 
had cooled off the ashes and everything looked 
pretty dreary. I can tell you, where such a short 
time ago, we had spent some very happy hours. 

We sat down a little distance apart on some 
rocks just at the edge of the clearing. Somehow 
we didn’t feel much like going any nearer. Some- 


184 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


thing seemed to say “It’s all over.” A sadness 
came over me like one feels at a funeral, only I 
knew of course that Lige was all right and wait¬ 
ing for us somewhere in the world. 

Suddenly Nate, who was a little further down 
towards the ruins, put up his finger for silence and 
then crept cautiously back to where I was sitting. 

“Voices,” he whispered, “women’s voices down 
in Lige’s cellar.” 

Gee, one wouldn’t believe how that startled me. 
My first thought was of my dream, that Lige had 
Mary Withers locked up in his cellar — that was 
foolish of course, but I guess my nerves were 
pretty much on edge after all we’d been through. 

The floor boards were pretty well burned off, 
but a few beams here and there prevented our 
seeing down into the cellar from where we sat. 
There was a bulkhead with stone steps leading 
down from the outside and we began cautiously 
to work our way round to the side where it was 
situated. 

But before we reached it we recognized the 
loud voice of old Maggie Gillis, and pretty soon 
the quiet voice of Carrie Finny. We got up near 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


and listened quite a while through the beams, 
before we let them know we were there. 

Old Maggie was saying “No hide nor hair of 
him any where. God rest his soul! I think he 
must have been transported.” 

“Translated I guess you mean” Carrie said 
softly. 

“Translated it is then, in a chariot of fire like 
Elijah of old. Sure, a prophet of Israel he must 
have been, sent by God to redeem us from our 
sins. He was in our midst and we knew him not. 
Saints preserve us.” 

They say Maggie worked in a convent before 
she met Jack Gillis, who ran away to California 
and left her alone with the child he gave her. 
Anyhow Maggie never forgot her Saints — and 
she could repeat Scripture by the yard. 

“Perhaps he did not perish in the flames after 
all,” we heard Carrie say gently. 

“And could it have been his spirit hovering 
round in the flames that the boys saw,” Maggie 
went on, “or was he a spirit intirely, with no flesh 
and bones at all? I’m thinking, there should be 
some remains left, if that is not so.” 


186 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


“But the boys were excited and they imagined 
they saw him in the flames.” 

“Well maybe, I hope so. Indeed I do. He’s a 
good man and should be cornin’ back — I don’t 
care what they say, and I don’t believe it at all, 
at all. Mary Withers was a wild little tomboy 
and not too bad if she’d had a mother to control 
her. But she’s not the kind, a man like Lige 
Golden would be runnin’ away with. It’s lies, I 
believe, the men have been puttin’ over on him.” 
The women were peering around and poking over 
the ashes and they had picked up a few bits of 
crockery and things which they were keeping for 
trinkets. 

“And what is that now?” Maggie was saying. 
“Is it a saint or a devil or just some ornament 
that’s taken his fancy in some part of the world. 
I’ll keep it in remembrince anyhow.” 

They were coming out now, so we went round 
to the bulkhead and told them that Lige was still 
living and all right, but when they asked us how 
we knew and had we seen him, we stammered and 
didn’t know what to say because we had agreed 
we wouldn’t tell anybody, for the present, our 


187 


LIGE GOLDEN—THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


part in Lige’s escape. Maggie came to our res¬ 
cue. 

“Well never mind, young men, we know how 
ye feel and we feel that way ourselves. It’s angels 
ye be for wantin’ to comfort us, though ye don’t 
know any more than ourselves.” Then she added 
“But ye are some of his best friends, I’ve been 
told, and if we didn’t believe so much in Lige, we 
might not be takin’ stock in you, because I’ve 
heard bad things of you two lately. Ye was his 
friends now, wasn’t ye?” 

We told her that we were, and that we knew the 
stories were all lies and we would always believe 
Lige innocent even if he never came back. 

But we didn’t know what to say about Mary 
Withers. That still puzzled us, and we didn’t 
want to talk about it any more than we had to, so 
we said nothing, and making excuses hurried 
down the road to the village. 

Well there isn’t much more to say about Lige 
Golden I guess, because we haven’t heard a word 
and now it’s going on two weeks, and we don’t 


188 


LIGE GOLDEN—THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


know whether or not we shall ever hear from him 
again. 

The village is settling down in the old way and 
the bad feeling seems to be dying out about Lige, 
first because he had so many friends who still 
stick up for him, folks like Phil Shackford, who 
is going straight as a string, and others that Lige 
helped one way or another. But the principal 
reason I think is that Deacon Withers won’t say 
a word against him, and says Mary is coming 
back in time, and everything will be all right. 

So I guess it would be pretty safe for Lige to 
come back though it might make some people feel 
pretty sheepish. Maybe that is one reason why 
he stays away because Lige really never liked to 
hurt anybody’s feelings. 


189 


XVII 

Hip hip hurrah! Three cheers for Lige Gold¬ 
en! What’s the matter with Lige? He’s all 
right! Who’s all right? Lige Golden is all right! 
Hip hip and hip hip hurrah! 

Well that’s what every body heard all round 
the village last night even if it was Sunday. And 
Lige can have anything he wants about here, first 
because he knows how to get it , and second be¬ 
cause we would give it to him. 

Anyhow Deacon Withers says he will have the 
old Sarah Woods house rebuilt and will present 
it to the town for a library and museum as a me¬ 
morial to our esteemed fellow citizen Elijah Gold¬ 
en ; or if Lige wants it, he can have it to do what 
he likes, but I guess it won’t be good enough for 
him to live in for he will be a rich man and able to 
own the finest farm in the county. 

But I’m going back and write it all down just 
as it happened and just as it would be in a story 
book because it beats all the fairy tales I ever 
read and what’s more, it’s true. 

Well it was two weeks ago Friday night or Sat- 


190 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


urday morning that Lige went away. How he 
went or where, nobody knows. He just dropped 
out of sight as mysterious as he came, — from 
nobody knows where, but of course we kept think¬ 
ing every day we would hear from him. 

Then there was Mary Withers. Her disappear¬ 
ance was just as mysterious and seemed to be 
somehow connected with the mystery about Lige. 

And to make it more puzzling there was the 
Deacon going about as usual only pleasanter and 
when anybody would ask for Mary — or mention 
the mystery about Lige and Mary, the deacon 
would smile and his eyes would twinkle for all 
the world like Lige’s, and then he would say 
something that wouldn’t give any satisfaction at 
all only make one puzzle all the more. 

Well, Sunday morning at church we got a sen¬ 
sation. That was our first surprise. After the 
sermon, Deacon Withers walked up the aisle to 
the pulpit with a letter in his hand, and after 
whispering a minute to Mr. Hardiman said he 
had a communication from the governor he 
would like to read. 

He said “the governor,” but he meant ex-gov- 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


ernor Fairbain who lives down below the Ville 
in a big mansion he built last summer because he 
is interested in the lumber business hereabouts 
and he liked the location for a summer residence. 

The letter said he had a matter of vital in¬ 
terest to the town’s people which he wished to 
bring before them at four o’clock and he would 
meet them in the church. As the matter con¬ 
cerned every one in the town — men, women and 
children — he hoped for a good attendance. 

I was mighty glad when he said everybody be¬ 
cause it’s not every day a fellow gets to see an 
ex-governor. We had often seen his son Dick or 
Richard who comes up to look after the mill in¬ 
terests of the lumber company, or to fish in the 
Dishmill, but we had never seen the governor and 
we were mighty anxious to hear what he had to 
say. 

Well, about a quarter of four while the church 
bell was ringing the governor’s rig came up 
through the village and it was some rig I can tell 
you. He had the slickest pair of chestnut horses 
I ever saw all prancing and gay — fancy harness 
with shiny buckles and ornaments — and the 


192 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


driver had a blue uniform with brass buttons and 
a stove pipe hat. The governor was seated inside 
the most gorgeous coach that ever came into 
these parts I guess — and by his side was his son 
Dick all dressed up and looking more distin¬ 
guished than we had ever seen him before. 

We all made a rush for the meeting house, but 
the carriage didn’t stop and it went right on till it 
reached Deacon Withers’ where it pulled up and 
the governor got out and went in. Then in a 
minute or two he came out and the carriage 
started along but stopped again pretty quick and 
seemed to be waiting for the deacon or something. 

We stood outside the church watching and 
wondering what they were waiting for when all 
of a sudden somebody shouted, “For heavens sake 
see what’s coming!” and when we looked back 
there was another carriage coming up the street 
just like the first one, only lovlier and with gray 
horses. You better believe that made us stare, 
but the curtains in this one were all down tight 
and we couldn’t make out whether it was empty 
or had folks inside. 

Gee! you ought to have heard the guesses, but 


i93 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


I won’t stop to set them down now. It was funny 
though, and funnier still when this carriage 
drove right up past the church like the first one 
did and stopped before the deacon’s door. 

“Well by gummy! He’s sent his private car¬ 
riage to bring the deacon down to the church,” 
some one exclaimed. 

“Maybe he’s sold out his share of the lumber 
business to the deacon,” another one went on, 
and someone else wanted to know why he would 
be doing business on Sunday anyhow? And so 
the remarks kept going round — till the deacon 
came out and got into the carriage. 

Then both carriages made a wide sweep and 
came back down past the church before turning 
into the yard and finally drew up before the doors 
of the church — one carriage stopping at the left 
door, and the other at the right. 

The driver on the governor’s carriage got down 
off the box and opened the door and the Governor 
and his son passed in and up the left hand aisle. 

Then the driver on the other carriage opened 
the door and first the deacon got out, then he 
turned and helped a very lovely, tall, dignified old 


194 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


lady and somebody whispered “It’s the gover¬ 
nor’s sister in law Miss Sarah Wilkins.” But the 
next minute a shout went up they must have 
heard in the church because every body that 
could was crowding about the doors and every¬ 
where. 

The deacon was standing on one side and Miss 
Wilkins on the other and right between them ap¬ 
peared the form of Mary Withers all dressed in 
white and holding a beautiful boquet of white 
roses and smiling as if she was the happiest 
creature God ever made. 

And she looked just as she did in my dream 
after Elijah disappeared in a cloud and we looked 
back and saw Mary standing beside us and we 
thought she was an angel, and that perhaps she 
was dead and had come back to comfort us. Well 
she wasn’t dead because she was looking round 
and laughing and calling us all by name and say¬ 
ing 

“Oh! I’m so glad you all came to my wedding 
and I’m going to be the happiest girl in all the 
world!” 

Then the music started and they marched up 


195 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


the other aisle, and Mr. Hardiman was waiting for 
them and the governor and his son stood up and 
the deacon gave Mary to Richard and they were 
married. And everybody came up and shook 
hands with the governor and the deacon and Miss 
Wilkins and congratulated Richard and kissed 
the bride. 

And when we went up — Nate and I — Mary 
grabbed us and kissed us like we were her long 
lost brothers and she whispered, 

“Oh! I’ve got a lovely message for you. Come 
over to the house after the wedding as quick as 
you can. I can’t wait to tell you.” 

Then she called us back and whispered, “Lige 
has gone to the gold fields with Dick’s cousin, 
Bennie Atwood, but don’t forget to come over for 
I’ve got lots to tell.” 

So we didn’t lose much time after the wedding 
and when they all went back to the deacon’s for 
dinner, Nate and I were standing by the gate and 
Mary whispered as she passed us, 

“Wait in the garden. I’ll be down in a jiffy.” 

Pretty soon she came down and Dick was with 


196 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


her and she introduced us again and said we were 
Lige’s best friends. 

Then she told us right before Dick — and Dick 
smiling all the time as if he thought it the best 
thing that ever happened, — how she had been 
on the point of running away or doing something 
desperate because she loved Dick so and thought 
she had no right to, because he was the governor’s 
son and so very rich and everything, while she 
was only a poor country girl; — and how Lige 
had taken her up to his house and talked to her 
and then let her stay all night because she was so 
stubborn she wouldn’t go home; — how he slept 
in the shed and got up next morning and drove 
her down to Miss Wilkins and told her what to 
do; — and then later, how he saw Dick and 
brought him to his senses; — and pulled the gov¬ 
ernor round and everything; and then finally, 
how the governor had taken to Lige and fitted 
him and his wild young nephew out to go West in 
search of gold. 

She said that Lige was always talking about his 
boys and how he wanted them all to come to the 
wedding, and that he had planned everything 


197 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


even to the closed carriage, and the dinner we 
were going to have with Maggie Gillis to wait on 
the table; and then, after it was all planned out, 
he took the train, only the night before, for the 
great wide West, saying that if he went back now 
it might not be so pleasant for some of the vil¬ 
lagers on account of the house being burned and 
he wanted everyone to be happy. 

Then she told how Lige went to her father in 
the night because he didn’t want him to suffer 
any more and explained everything; and how by 
some magic he had changed her father over so 
wonderfully that she couldn’t believe her own 
senses he was so lovely and dear. 

We went in to dinner and the deacon sat down 
at the head of the table while Mary sat at the 
other end and poured the tea as she had done so 
many times before. Dick sat on the deacon’s left 
and Miss Wilkins on his right while the governor 
sat next to Mary. That left an empty place be¬ 
tween Miss Wilkins and Mary. 

We boys had a little side table because there 
wasn’t room for both of us at the big table, but 
we could see and hear everything and we were 


198 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


wondering who was to sit in the empty place. 
Well, what do you think? 

That place was for Phil Shackford and Lige 
had fixed it all up that way and one of the car¬ 
riages had gone up after him. Lige said he would 
like Phil to be there for a special reason and if 
there had been room he would have invited the 
whole family but Phil must be there anyhow and 
so it had to be done — every thing just as Lige 
had pictured it out in his mind. Lige certainly 
was some fixer. 

Well pretty soon Phil was driven up, all in his 
best clothes and looking fine; but a little bashful 
I guess in such company, and sitting next to the 
governor’s sister. 

We knew the secret reason why Phil was there 
because Mary had told us. We knew too, that 
Lige was carrying out his plans about reforming 
Phil and we knew now that whatever Lige started 
he finished in grand style. Well, Phil was to be 
the new superintendent of the mill but he didn’t 
know it yet, and he wanted him to meet the Gov¬ 
ernor, who would get him appointed at the next 
meeting of the board of directors. 


199 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


Then, when we were all seated and Deacon 
Withers asked the blessing, his voice was wonder¬ 
ful soft and mellow, and when he mentioned the 
stranger lately in our midst who came to his own 
and his own received him not, we knew he meant 
Lige, and the deacon’s voice trembled, and he got 
out his pocket handkerchief and wiped his eyes 
when he said the amen, like he had lost his only 
son. I guess we all felt the same way and said 
amen in our hearts, again and again, if we didn’t 
speak it out loud. 


200 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


The letter immediately following appeared in 
the Lynnville Times shortly after the publication 
of the foregoing manuscript, and is from the wid¬ 
ow of the late Judge Benjamin Atwood, — clear¬ 
ly seen to be no other than the “wild young neph¬ 
ew” of the old ex-governor, who went west with 
Lige “in search of gold.” This letter seemed a 
fitting tribute to our hero and a subtle ending to a 
very pretty story; but when, a week later, another 
epistle arrived from a most unexpected quarter, 
the editor was too stunned for expression. Both 
documents are here appended and we leave our 
readers to battle with their own emotions. (The 
Publisher.) 


201 


Peoria, III. 


Editor, Lynnville Times. 

Dear Sir: 

Replying to your kind request, permit me to say 
that while I did not know Elijah Golden person¬ 
ally, my late husband not infrequently referred 
to him as a most revered friend who had done 
him an inestimable service. 

It now appears that while they were prospect¬ 
ing together in Nevada in the early eighties, Eli¬ 
jah Golden insisted on going to prison to shield 
my husband who was a younger man and en¬ 
gaged to a girl back East. I was that girl. 

Needless to say , with my husband's death and 
the added shock of his confession I am consid¬ 
erably agitated, but I can testify to the fact that 
the influence of this mysterious individual upon 
my husband was remarkable. During our long 
and happy married life I have always felt that 
there was some hallowed memory associated in 
my dear husband's mind with this name. 

I may be pardoned for a just pride in the fact 
that my husband, who, I have heard, was a wild 


202 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


lad, became one of the most respected citizens of 
our state. 

It is pathetic indeed to think of Elijah Golden 
dying alone, uncared for , and in prison for a 
crime of which he was innocent, and that /, who , 
in a sense was the cause , should be unable to vis¬ 
it him. While my husband guarded his secret up 
to the day before his death, I have every reason to 
believe that he did not forget his friend and was 
more or less directly in touch with him and his 
needs to the last. 

I shall be very grateful if you will send me 
whatever articles you may publish relative to this 
saintly and , may I say , Christlike character. 

Very respectfully yours , 

Lucretia Atwood. 

(Mrs. Benjamin Atwood) 


203 


Somewhere in the World. 
Editor, Lynnville Times. 

Dear Sir: 

I have read with peculiar interest, not unmixed 
with some genuine amusement, your story of 
Elijah Golden. May I say that I am in a posi¬ 
tion to vouch for most of the facts as stated, and, 
in a larger sense perhaps, testify to the value 
of many of his teachings, having tested them 
throughout a long lifetime, and under varying 
circumstances. 

I am strongly moved to protest, however, 
some of the inferences which have been made, 
and especially that of your correspondent, Mrs. 
Atwood, referring to him as a saintly or (< Christ- 
like character.” Moreover, I doubt seriously if 
he should be regarded as a hero, even in the res¬ 
cue of Charlie Whiting, where he acted merely as 
any sane man of his physical strength and train¬ 
ing would surely have done. I have known hard¬ 
ened criminals, more than once, to risk life in the 
impulse to aid a fellow in danger or distress. 

Neither would I regard Lige Golden a martyr 


204 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 

in any sense of the word. He loved life too well 
to sacrifice it needlessly, and, much as the follow¬ 
ing information may shock and pain your more 
sensitive readers, I am prepared to prove that he 
did not die in prison . 

While a “non-combatant” on principle, he did 
not hesitate to use his somewhat exceptional at¬ 
tainments, on occasion, to further his own wel¬ 
fare. If he failed to fulfil some of the ideals 
which have become standardized by tradition, it 
goes to show that he was quite an ordinary mor¬ 
tal, tempted in all points, like the rest of man¬ 
kind. It may truthfully be said in his behalf that 
he loved mercy and hated injustice. He also re¬ 
garded life better than death; and service better 
than sacrifice. With this in mind perhaps some 
of his evil deeds may be regarded with a shade of 
of charity. 

As your readers are now aware, Elijah Golden 
had an extensive knowledge of magic or the art of 
misdirection, which he acquired largely in the 
East. He was also an expert locksmith. With 
his usual capacity for “fixing things,” it was but 
natural (although unusual) that he should walk 


205 


LIGE GOLDEN—THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


out of prison one fine night, breathing an air of 
relative innocence, and leaving another prisoner 

— a lifer — locked securely in his cell; but the in¬ 
teresting part of the story is, that this prisoner 
voluntarily assumed the name of Elijah Golden 
and kept it, up to the time of his death. 

It is furthermore a matter of prison record, 
that Jack Curran — a (< lifer,” — and dangerous 
character, escaped(?) about this time; and there 
is little to show that any serious attempt was 
made to apprehend him. That these events could 
take place with almost no publicity may now per¬ 
haps be explained: — a well known judge and an 
ex-governor from another state having passed to 
their reward, it will be hard to convict. Suffice 
to say, no actual injustice was involved, and even 
Jack Curran proved a real man on the inside. 

It will interest your readers to learn, what per¬ 
haps some have already surmised, — and I can no 
longer see any good reason for keeping it secret, 

— that Lige Golden was in reality the (t only son” 
of Deacon Withers, and that Mary Withers was 
thus his own little half-sister in the flesh. These 
facts, curiously, were not known even to the 


206 


LIGE GOLDEN —THE MAN WHO TWINKLED 


parties most interested — viz: father and son — 
until that eventful night when the boys left Lige 
standing alone at the foot of the lane. It was his 
“matron saint” who guided him to that little up¬ 
per room and brought restoration and peace; — 
(< that other Mary” who gave her life at his birth. 

Would the boys like to ask any more ques¬ 
tions? As an escaped convict it may be wise to 
keep my whereabouts unknown , but you can ad¬ 
dress the publishers. 

Do his eyes still twinkle? Yes. And it's fun 
— lots of fun — just to be living. 

Eternally yours , 

LIGE. 


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